Lack of detail sinks bid for $8B NOAA vehicle
Satellite imagery of the northeast United States after a large snowstorm. Gettyimages.com/ NASA/Bryan Allen
By
Nick Wakeman
AttainX argued the solicitation wasn't clear and lacked direction. But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration countered that their bid was unclear and lacked direction.
A lack of details is what seems to have sunk AttainX’s bid for a spot on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's $8 billion ProTech 2.0 small business contract for professional services.
AttainX challenged NOAA’s decision in March to not award it a position on ProTech's domain focused on satellites. A second protestor in FedWriters Inc. had their challenge on separate arguments denied on June 30.
The Government Accountability Office denied the AttainX protest on June 22 and released the decision on Friday. In that document, GAO lays out the company’s arguments and why NOAA rebuffed the company.
Part of AttainX’s argument is that the solicitation wasn’t clear, but NOAA also documented the areas it argues that AttainX didn’t provide enough details on
When compared to the 15 awardees, AttainX scored a Low Confidence for its technical expertise. But it matched the other bidders in the areas of management approach, past performance and cost/price.
The Low Confidence mark led NOAA to believe that AttainX didn’t understand the requirements and therefore represented a high risk for the agency.
AttainX complained that the solicitation provided little direction and was “highly general." The company argued the solicitation lacked “discrete requirements, performance objectives, or sample deliverables.”
But NOAA countered that AttainX’s description of the solicitation requirements is “fundamentally inaccurate.” There were detailed specifications for each service area and there was a general definitions section.
The solicitation also puts the onus on bidders to demonstrate their relevant experience, or as GAO wrote -- "Statements paraphrasing the requirements would be considered inadequate and unsatisfactory."
Bidders also needed to substantiate their claimed experience and for NOAA, the lack of that detail was a problem in AttainX’s proposal.
For example, AttainX stated that it does extensive testing but doesn’t mention calibration, validation and verification work. Those three areas were requirements for that part of the proposal.
AttainX tried to argue that NOAA used unstated evaluation criteria. GAO shot that down and rejected AttainX's challenges to NOAA's evaluation methodology.
“Based on our review of the record, we find no basis to question the agency’s evaluation of AttainX’s proposal,” the watchdog agency wrote.
With the AttainX and FedWriters’ protests resolved, ProTech 2.0's satellite domain is now open for business. NOAA uses the ProTech vehicle to acquire a wide range of professional, technical and scientific services.