Protests over $10B Polaris contract move to court

The Government Accountability Office may have cleared its docket of protests involving the Polaris small business contract, but several disappointed bidders have taken their complaints to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

Six companies filed protests at the court, where the cases are consolidated into a single matter that Judge Thompson Dietz will preside over.

That group of six believes they should have been on the General Services Administration's list of 102 winners announced back in December. Polaris is GSA’s small business vehicle for IT services across the government with a $10 billion ceiling over 10 years.

GSA plans to make awards in four small business categories for Polaris: general SB, woman-owned, HUBZone, and service-disabled veteran-owned.

The protests at the court only apply to the general SB awards. GSA has not made awards under the other categories yet.

Only a redacted version of the complaint filed by the Beat-LDI joint venture on Jan. 17 is available so far. The venture's partners are Business Enabled Aquisition and Technology and Lawelawe Defense Inc., with BEAT as the mentor and Lawelawe as the protege.

Significant parts of the complaint are blacked out, such as why GSA said it would not choose Beat-LDI for an award.

But we know that Beat-LDI is complaining about unstated evaluation criteria. The company also complains that GSA ignored parts of its proposal.

Beat LDI wants GSA to re-evaluate its proposal and award the company a position on Polaris.

The other five companies involved in the court case are Assyst, DevTech Systems, Gencetek, Network Runners and OM Partners JV 2.

GAO dismissed protests by Visual Soft, Rigil Corp., Ideal System Solutions, 2Aces Integration, Red Pine Solutions and Trigent Solutions. Those companies theoretically could join the court case.

CompQSoft withdrew its GAO protest on Jan. 30. That is also when Assyst, DevTech, and Network Runners withdrew from the GAO process. But CompQSoft has not yet filed at the Court of Federal Claims.

GSA received 569 proposals for the general small business pool, so more protests could be coming. We will monitor the court docket to see if it grows.