Judge denies protests over $10B Army IT hardware contract
Gettyimages.com/miodrag ignjatovic
By
Nick Wakeman
Seven companies challenged their removal from the ITES-4H competition for allegedly not meeting compliance requirements.
A federal judge has denied protests by several companies that were removed from the competition for a $10 billion Army IT product contract.
GovWave, Futron, Government Acquisitions, DH Technologies, Enterprise Technology Solutions, Unicom Government and Advanced Computer Concepts all challenged how the Army evaluated proposals.
But in a Monday ruling, Judge Marian Blank Horn of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims rejected all of the protests and sided with the Army.
Her decision ends the pre-award protests involving the Army ITES-4 Hardware contract. The Army plans to make up to 17 awards for the 10-year vehicle.
A total of 10 companies protested when the Army removed them from the competition at the end of phase one of the evaluations. The Army re-admitted three of those firms back in December.
While the judge’s ruling is sealed for now, a redacted version of the Army’s motion to dismiss lays out why the service branch felt the remaining seven should not be allowed back into the competition.
The Army argued that the companies violated the solicitation’s strict compliance requirements. One section of the Army’s motion to dismiss is titled: "Their Dislike of the Consequences is not a Basis to Overturn the Agency’s Decision."
The compliance issue was important for the Army because it uses that check as a mechanism to weed out proposals and not spend time evaluating noncompliant bids. It is a way for the Army to check if a bidder has followed the instructions in the solicitation.
“The Army clearly informed offerors that an offeror’s failure to provide proposals in compliance with the instructions specified as Strict Compliance Requirements in the RFP shall render the Offerors proposal noncompliant,” the Army wrote in its motion.
The judge agreed with that interpretation.
Other arguments were specific to each of the seven protests including misstatements about the solicitation, omitting material information, allegations of unequal treatment, and general non-compliance.
The Army is now free to make awards, but another set of protests will likely follow them.