Perspecta back in $7.6B DOD cloud email competition

Perspecta evidently had some valid complaints with its protest of the $7.6 billion DEOS cloud contract to General Dynamics.

GD's IT services segment and Perspecta were head to head competitors for that massive contract to deliver cloud-based email and collaboration tools across the Defense Department.

When General Dynamics won the contract, Perspecta filed a bid protest on Sept. 9. That was followed by a supplemental protest filing on Sept. 23.

Now the General Services Administration and Defense Information Systems Agency, who partnered on the contract, have pulled the award back and will do the competition over again.

In other words, Perspecta’s protest pointed out real issues with how GSA and DISA evaluated proposals for the Defense Enterprise Office Solutions contract.

The protest documents are under a protective order, but in general Perspecta made two allegations. First, that the evaluation wasn’t done properly. They also alleged that GD had a conflict of interest. But one source told me that apparently there was a problem with how each company interpreted the pricing requirements. So GSA and DISA will have to clarify that section of the solicitation.

Another source indicated that GSA will revise its requirements and let the bidders revise their proposals. GSA and DISA will then reevaluate proposals and make a new award. The government also is going to review the allegation of organizational conflict of interest and make a decision about it.  

While this is a victory for Perspecta, it is just one battle. There is no guarantee that they’ll ultimately win the contract. The landscape is littered with examples of companies that won a corrective action via a protest and still lost the contract.

If GSA and DISA were to award the contract to Perspecta the second time around, it’s almost a guarantee that GD would file its own protest.