Oral arguments set for $1B Army contract dispute
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By
Nick Wakeman
A U.S. Court of Federal Claims judge will hear Groundswell's claims that the Army favored Accenture Federal Services in the competition to consolidate several business systems.
A federal judge has set April 1 as the date for oral arguments in a case that pits Groundswell against the Army and Accenture Federal Services involving a $1 billion business system consolidation contract.
Accenture Federal won the competition to shift several Army business systems into an SAP platform. Groundswell objects to the award, claiming that the Army favored Accenture throughout the multi-phase evaluation process.
Groundswell claims the Army changed the parameters of the evaluation midway through and let Accenture Federal meet a lower standard during the demonstration phase.
The Army Enterprise Business Systems – Convergence contract has a potential value of $1 billion over 10 years.
EBS-C calls on the winning contractor consolidate five business systems onto a single SAP-powered platform. The Army's goal is greater efficiency and better decision making.
All of those systems currently operate on SAP software, with Accenture Federal as the long-time incumbent. The Army required Accenture Federal and Groundswell to use SAP in their proposals.
In its protest, Groundswell lays out several allegations challenging how the Army conducted the evaluation. Groundswell claims the Army made changes to the evaluation process and criteria that swung the competition in Accenture Federal’s favor.
The Army and Accenture have filed responses to Groundswell’s allegations, but the court has sealed the filings for now.
Lawyers for the companies and the Army need to agree on what to redact from those filings before the court can release a public version. It could take at least another week to finish that process.
Judge Richard Hertling will hear the oral arguments on April 1 in Washington, D.C.