Serco falls short on LOGCAP protest

The Government Accountability Office has ruled against Serco Inc.’s bid protest of a $135 million Army contract award to Jacobs Technology for logistics support.

Serco held the incumbent contract to support the Army Logistics Civil Augmentation program known as LOGCAP. The company held the contract since 2007 and had earned about $165 million in task orders for support services such as program office support, program manager support and contracting support.

LOGCAP itself is held by DynCorp, Fluor and Kellogg Brown and Root.

The new contract with Jacobs is worth $135 million over three years.

In its protest, Serco said the agency conducted flawed discussions, misevaluated the technical and management proposals, conducted a flawed realism analysis and failed to consider an alleged conflict of interest.

GAO denied all of those protest points.

On the conflict of interest point, Serco claimed that there was an organizational conflict of interest for Jacobs Technology because it is a business unit of Jacobs Engineering Group. Jacobs Engineering competes in the construction and engineering industry against the LOGCAP contractors. Because of this Jacobs has a conflict, Serco argued.

To argue that there is a conflict of interest, a protester needs to submit what GAO called “hard facts,” and GAO ruled that Serco’s allegation was speculation, and was not enough to overrule the contracting officer’s decision.

On pricing, Serco claimed Jacob’s prices were too low to support its proposed solution, but GAO found no basis to support the allegation.

Serco also claimed that Army discussions with the bidders were unequal and misleading, but GAO found that Serco took an Army request for more information to mean that it wasn’t to use “cross-leveraging” for its labor costs. This misunderstanding led Serco to increase its labor rates.

But GAO again found that there was no evidence of unequal discussions.

Serco officials declined to comment on GAO’s decision.