DXC bid for CDC IT contract undone by higher price
By
Nick Wakeman
DXC had a higher score on its technical solution but its higher price led CDC to pick NTT Data for its IT and data center support work.
A lot has happened in the battle between the company now known as DXC Technologies and NTT Data for a $62 million Centers for Disease Control and Prevention IT services contract.
First, those companies looked very different when the competition for the contract began. DXC Technologies was carved out in part by the former HPE Enterprise Services. Computer Sciences Corp. merged with that HPE business to form DXC earlier this year.
NTT Data bolstered its public sector business through the November acquisition of the former Dell Services Federal Government business.
As HPE Enterprise Services, DXC was the incumbent and won the competition for the award known as the Applications Hosting and Enterprise File and Data Center Services. It was competed as a task order under the CDC Information Management Services contract.
NTT Data filed a protest when DXC won the contract and that eventually led CDC to pull the award. The agency then re-evaluated the proposals and flipped the award to NTT Data the second time around.
Now it was DXC’s turn to protest.
Last month, the Government Accountability Office weighed in and sided with NTT Data.
DXC complained about several things but most centered on complaints that its proposal was higher-rated and was worth its higher price.
DXC scored 89 points out of 100, compared to NTT Data’s 73 points. But DXC’s price was $88.3 million, and NTT Data’s was $62.3 million.
In picking NTT Data, CDC said that the higher technical score didn’t justify paying $26 million more.
GAO found that this was a reasonable decision for CDC so it denied the protest.
DXC questioned how realistic NTT Data’s pricing was and argued that CDC should have conducted a price realism evaluation. But GAO said this wasn’t required because this is a fixed-price contract and the risk falls to the contractor and not the government.
DXC also argued that CDC didn’t properly evaluate NTT Data’s technical solution and that there were weaknesses. But the solicitation only required that the solutions be deemed acceptable and unacceptable. DXC did not argue that NTT Data’s proposal was unacceptable, only that it had some weaknesses that needed to be explained.
Finally, DXC disputed CDC’s best-value determination. GAO supported CDC’s decision because price and technical evaluation were equally weighted.
One way to look at this is that NTT Data’s proposal was technically acceptable and was the lowest price. But that doesn’t make this an LPTA competition.
It wasn’t a price shootout. DXC’s price was just too high to justify the higher technical solution.