FirstSource III battle moves to court

The battle over the Homeland Security Department’s FirstSource III contract vehicle has shifted to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

All 16 protests filed at the Government Accountability Office will likely be dismissed now that three other companies have filed lawsuits over how DHS has managed the $10 billion commodity IT contract. DHS uses FirstSource to buy hardware, software and services from small businesses.

Solaris Colorado, V3Gate Partners and Westwind Partners have filed complaints at the court. They are focusing their challenges on the value-added reseller portion of FirstSource III, which was awarded earlier this month.

While the three cases are currently separate, they will likely be consolidated into a single matter. The same attorney represents all three companies, Eric Valle of the law firm PilieroMazza.

Meanwhile, DHS has asked GAO to dismiss the cases pending there. The court has higher jurisdiction in bid protests, so GAO takes a back seat. The dismissal process will take several days.

It is also possible that the companies who protested at GAO will join the court cases.

The protesters are taking issue with how DHS evaluated proposals and pricing, as well as how it conducted the best-value tradeoffs.

FirstSource III is a small-business set-aside vehicle with tracks for different types of small businesses including women-owned, service-disabled veteran-owned, historically-underutilized business zones and small businesses with no socio-economic distinctions.

Companies had to compete through a two-phase process. Phase one covered ability to perform the work and supply chain risk management approach. Phase two is for demonstrated prior experience, past performance, and price.

For best-value tradeoff, DHS weighed the evaluation of the non-price factors against the pricing to pick winners.

The companies filed their protests at the court on Thursday and most of the substantive filings are sealed. No schedule has been posted.