Army lets one protester back in for $10B IT product competition
Gettyimages.com / Sean Gladwell
By
Ross Wilkers
A separate set of six protests remains active at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims over their elimination from a place on the IT Enterprise Solutions 4 Hardware vehicle.
One protester that raised complaints about how the Army is managing the potential $10 billion recompete of its main commercial IT product contract is now back in the running.
In March, CACI International's ID Technologies subsidiary filed a lawsuit against the Army's exclusion of its proposal for the multiple-award IT Enterprise Solutions 4 Hardware contract.
ID Technologies' protest at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims remained on its own, while six others have since been consolidated into a single case under the challenge raised by the GovWave joint venture.
But in a Wednesday filing, the Army told the court it has taken a corrective action on the matter of IDTec's protest and said that bid is no longer excluded. IDTec is now back in the running for one of 17 awards on the potential 10-year ITES-4H vehicle.
On Thursday, the court dismissed IDTec's protest with prejudice to mark that case's permanent end. IDTec can no longer make the same claim that shaped its lawsuit.
The protests consolidated under GovWave however remain active and oral arguments in that matter took place on July 28, followed by a series of other supplemental filings since.
Proposals were due in October 2022 for the ITES-4H vehicle and its three-step process for evaluating bids. Step one is determining if proposals met strict compliance requirements and that is where the unresolved set of six protests focus on.
The Army can continue to evaluate bids but cannot make awards until the judge makes a ruling or the service branch decides to take corrective action on the unresolved protests.
GovWave is owned by Govplace, Intelligent Waves and V3Gate. The protests consolidated under GovWave's challenge are from Advanced Computer Concepts, DH Technologies, Enterprise Technology Solutions, Government Acquisitions Inc. and Unicom Government.
A bulk of the filings there remain sealed, but the redacted version of GovWave's complaint alleges the Army incorrectly eliminated the joint venture's bid. GovWave claims it does not have adverse past performance, but the Army says GovWave's bid was not specific enough in saying so.