Another firm joins protests over $800M Army engineering contract

Another company has joined the list of protesters pushing back on the Army’s decision to award an $800 million engineering services contract to its three large business incumbents.

Most of our coverage to date has focused on how it appears that the Army went back on its word by not selecting at least two small businesses for its Total Engineering and Integration Services IV contract.

The contract went to three incumbents from TEIS III and all large businesses -- General Dynamics IT, NCI Information Systems and Science Applications International Corp.

One small business in TekSynap has filed a protest. They have been joined by two large businesses in IAP Worldwide and M.C. Dean. All are claiming the evaluation wasn’t conducted properly.

TekSynap also has the extra charge of arguing the Army didn’t follow the solicitation, which states there would be two small business winners.

More protests could be on the way. There were 11 bidders on the contracts, so we have yet to hear what the other disappointed companies will do if anything.

The Army has declined to comment on the contract. They first said they weren’t finished with debriefings. Now they will not comment because protests are pending.

The protests by TekSynap, IAP Worldwide and M.C. Dean were filed on Oct. 26 and 27. A decision is expected by early February.

I’m going to out on a bit of limb and predict that the Army is going to take some sort of corrective action. There will be no GAO decision.

My first instinct is that the Army figure out a way to add at least one small business to the contract.

I’m not sure how that will impact the large business protesters, but we’ll see.