Serco drops protest over $208M Navy logistics contract
Gettyimages.com/ DNY59
By
Nick Wakeman
A protest by the incumbent led the Navy to a reconsideration and switch of the award, which is rare.
Serco Inc. has backed off of a protest fight involving a $209 million Navy contract, which at one point looked like the company had it wrestled away from the incumbent.
In the spring of 2022, Serco's North American subsidiary won the contract to provide logistics support to the Navy. The win was a takeaway from incumbent CACI International. The contract is for global logistics support, oversight, training and management services.
As we regularly see, CACI filed a protest in March 2022 arguing that the evaluation was unreasonable. The Navy then took a corrective action in May 2022 to reconsider.
But in an unusual move, the Navy switched the award from Serco to CACI in the spring. Serco then filed a protest on May 1 in objection
Serco withdrew its protest on June 14. Companies that protest don't have to say why they are withdrawing, and a request for comment from Serco has not been returned.
But given the timing, it appears as if Serco withdrew after receiving the agency report on the protest. Agencies have 30 days to file the report, which Serco would have seen on or around June 1.
Given that Serco withdrew two weeks after that, we can be fairly certain that something in the report led Serco to decide its fight for the contract was over.