ManTech nearly wins $93M protest, but DHS pulls the plug

ManTech International apparently was on the cusp of winning its protest of a $92.7 million Homeland Security Department task order that was won by CACI International, but then the agency suddenly pulled the award just 10 days before the release of a ruling.

The protest shows up as “dismissed” on the Government Accountability Office protest docket on April 7. This week, ManTech made a new protest filing but this time asking for what is known as “Entitlement.”

In other words, they want DHS to reimburse the costs of filing the protest. An entitlement has to meet two conditions: the agency dragged its feet in taking a corrective action, and the protest clearly had merits.

On top of its initial protest, ManTech also filed two supplemental protests. Gven how late in the 100-day GAO protest process the corrective action came, it looks pretty obvious that DHS knew GAO was very likely going to rule in ManTech’s favor.

Corrective action means that DHS is going to re-evaluate proposals and make a new award decision.

That doesn’t automatically mean that ManTech will win this time and CACI will lose. It will all depend on what DHS to correct its apparent mistakes.

DHS is competing the task order via the Alliant 2 vehicle. The order is for engineering, IT and telecommunications services to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

ManTech declined to comment.