OASIS hit with pre-award protests
By
Nick Wakeman
One small business and a group representing small businesses have filed protests over terms in the solicitation for the $60 billion OASIS contract.
The General Services Administration has been hit with at least one protest, and maybe two, involving the lucrative OASIS contract for professional services.
The agency released the solicitation for the One Acquisition Solutions for Integrated Services contract last week, and proposals are due Sept. 17.
USFalcon, a small business government contractor headquartered in Morrisville, N.C., filed the protest today with the Government Accountability Office.
The company is challenging a term in the solicitation. "It is a fairly narrow issue and we are hopeful that the issue will be resolved favorably," said attorney Jen Miller, who repesents USFalcon. Miller is an attorney with Wyrick Robbins Yates and Ponton LLP in Raeigh, N.C.
A decision by GAO is expected by Nov. 18.
Because this is a pre-award protest, GSA is only prohibited from making an award decision. It can still receive proposals and begin evaluations, a GAO spokesman said.
The OASIS contract could be worth up to $60 billion, and will likely have more than 200 awardees that will compete for task orders to provide professional services to government agencies.
The contract has both an unrestricted portion open to all bidders and a portion reserved solely for small businesses.
A second, more unusual protest also may be in the works. According to the LinkedIn page for the Voice of Small Business in America, the group has filed what it calls a pre-award protest. That protest was filed directly with GSA.
The group is objecting to the evaluation criteria described in the solicitation for the unrestricted portion of the contract.
The group says the criteria are contrary to government policy that promotes teaming arrangements among contractors. The group wants GSA to allow bidders to use the aggregated past performance of their teams to meet the criteria.
A GSA spokeswoman said she had not seen either protest and could not comment.
A source in the legal community questioned whether the Voice of Small Business in America had standing to file a protest since they are not a bidder, and wouldn’t be considered an interested party in legal terms.
We’ll continue to update this story as more information becomes available.