New round of T4NG2 lawsuits hits the court
Gettyimages.com / Witthaya Prasongsin
By
Ross Wilkers
As of now: three companies are asking a federal judge to hear their complaints over how the Veterans Affairs Department made awards for the potential $61 billion IT vehicle.
The Veterans Affairs Department's recompete of its go-to IT services and solutions contract is now the subject of a new round of lawsuits, just as it was during the process of making the awards.
In a Tuesday Sam.gov posting, VA said that Technatomy and Veteran First Technologies have both filed challenges at the Court of Federal Claims to challenge their exclusion from the T4NG2 awardee group. A joint venture going by the name of T4NG2 JV has also filed to the court.
The Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology Next Generation 2 vehicle will have an estimated $61 billion ceiling over up to 10 years.
Technatomy and Veteran First have made their court filings as 13 other protests are active at the Government Accountability Office with decision due dates listed as ranging from late June to early July.
GAO is likely to dismiss the set of protests before it if the government audit and watchdog agency determines the same issues are being raised at the court, which has greater authority to enforce bid protest rulings. The court also has a more elongated timeline for adjudicating bid protests than GAO, which turns around decisions within 90 days of the filing.
All of the court filings are currently sealed, but the protesters that filed to GAO center their arguments around how VA validated their self-scores in the proposals.
T4NG2's self-scoring methodology was also the subject of a lawsuit during the pre-award phase from Booz Allen Hamilton, which ended up being chosen for an award.
VA looked at 177 bids in total before it made the initial 30 selections in late October, and evidently took multiple weeks to complete the debriefings.
Earlier this March, VA replaced Sierra7 with CGI Federal after the former was determined to no longer qualify as small.
Once opened for business, T4NG2 will overlap with the current version and continue the status as VA's primary vehicle for acquiring IT services and solutions.
The original T4NG vehicle expires in 2026 and approximately $15 billion in task order spend has gone through it since being opened for business in 2016.