Travel management issues helped nix Perspecta's TSA bid

One of the reasons the Transportation Security Administration didn’t want to pay a higher price for a higher-scoring proposal by Perspecta to run TSA’s IT infrastructure was that the agency didn’t like how Perspecta wanted to handle travel expenses.

CACI International won TSA's "IMPACT" contract to manage IT infrastructure for 80,000 agency employees at 650 sites. Perspecta lost its protest of the award and GAO has now released the decision.

While we reported earlier that CACI had a lower price and Perspecta thought its proposal merited a premium, details about the GAO decision weren’t available until now.

The price differential was about $22 million. CACI bid $178 million and Perspecta bid $200.6 million.

Both companies scored “satisfactory” for technical approach and transition in, but Perspecta was scored as “outstanding” for its management approach and CACI scored “satisfactory.”

But according to the GAO decision, TSA was uncomfortable with how Perspecta planned to allocate travel expenses. TSA was concerned that would increase the cost to TSA beyond the $200 million bid.

TSA decided this represented “an inherent risk” to TSA. That risk coupled with the higher price was too much for the agency.

Perspecta argued that TSA should have raised its concerns about travel expenses through discussions with the company, but GAO ruled there was no requirement to do so and rejected that argument.

Perspecta also claimed CACI had too many qualifiers on its firm fixed prices. But TSA and GAO found the assumptions CACI used to establish its prices were well-documented.

With the decision, CACI can now move forward and begin the transition process from the incumbent contractor CSRA, now part of General Dynamics. CSRA filed two pre-award protests but didn’t protest the award to CACI.

According to the GAO decision, five total companies submitted bids.