Alliant contract bids to be reconsidered

The General Services Administration will re-evaluate all 62 of the bid proposals for its Alliant contract, industry sources said today.

The agency is expected to announce the decision later today, they added.

"A recent decision issued by the Court of Federal Claims concerning Alliant has resulted in the Alliant team taking action that will include re-evaluating your proposal in a manner which is consistent with the court's order," GSA said in an e-mail message to contractors that bid on the 10-year, $50 billion governmentwide acquisition contract.

GSA awarded Alliant to 29 companies in July 2007. It added one more contractor to the list in December.

"We are reconstituting the Alliant team to review a detailed schedule and process in order to move forward with the re-evaluation," GSA told the companies.

GSA will provide more details in two weeks, GSA said in the e-mail message.

Federal Claims Court Judge Francis Allegra enjoined the Alliant contract March 3, forbidding GSA to move ahead with the contract or placing any obligations against it. The judge, however, gave GSA and the parties an opportunity to work out a deal in a fashion they deem appropriate.

Allegra ruled that the protesting companies had a legitimate complaint against GSA's awards. In Allegra's opinion, released March 5, he said GSA didn't treat the companies' bids fairly as the agency based their award on a complicated system of statistics and "sketchy" information.

GSA based its system on a formula that combined the bidders' basic contract plan and their past performance scores, which the agency tallied on information gathered by surveying the companies' past customers.

But Allegra found that the information from the references didn't convey enough details, and they didn't meet the requirements in the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

FAR requires the past performance information to consider currency and relevance of the past performance information in addition to source context and general trends.

Matthew Weigelt writes for Federal Computer Week, an 1105 Government Information Group publication.