OASIS+ clears its final pre-award protest hurdle
Gettyimages.com/Douglas Rissing
By
Nick Wakeman
A combination of denied protests and corrective actions means that every small business category of the massive professional services contract could be open for business by the end of this calendar year.
The last of the protests involving the OASIS+ small business contracts have been resolved, a move that means the General Services Administration can move ahead on awards.
In a post to its GSA Interact site, the agency said it plans to make the first block of small business awards in early December. Following a post-award conference, GSA wants to open the OASIS+ small business contracts for business by mid-December.
At the same time, GSA is eyeing mid-December for the unrestricted awards and those being available for use by the end of the month.
Agencies across the federal government use the massive vehicle for a variety of professional services needs.
The protests that have hit the OASIS+ small business category have challenged a variety of perceived problems with evaluations, including how mentor-protégé joint ventures were treated. One involved the lack of a waiver to sell certain communications equipment.
An second protester challenged their size designation because it was a small business at the time of submitting the proposal, but recertified as not small before awards were made.
The last two protests involved Wits Solutions, whose protest was denied. Wits was qualified as small in the technical and engineering domain and the research-and-development domain, but was not considered a small business for the management and advisory domain.
The solicitation requires that a company be considered small in every domain to be considered for an award.
The final protest was not due for a Government Accountability Office decision until February. But GAO dismissed that challenge after GSA took corrective action and let that company, Venergy Group, back into the competition.
GSA originally knocked Venergy out due to what is saw as not enough price/cost information in the proposal. But after the protest, GSA agreed to let Venergy back in and will resume the evaluation of that bid.
The OASIS+ awards are divided by different categories of small businesses – HUBzone, women-owned, service-disabled, veteran-owned, 8(a), and general small business.
Except for general small business, each of those OASIS+ categories are now available for agencies to place orders against.
GSA also plans to make more unrestricted and small business awards across all the categories during the first half of 2025.