Q2 Impact wins legal fight to secure OASIS+ seat
Gettyimages.com / Carol Yepes
By
Ross Wilkers
The company can now proceed on pursuing task orders following a judge's ruling that it was eligible for the government-wide professional services contract vehicle after all.
Q2 Impact has ended up with what it wanted all along in the company’s legal fight over OASIS+ for the past three months: a prime position on the government-wide professional services contract vehicle.
Back in December, Q2 filed a lawsuit objecting to how the General Services Administration deemed the company ineligible for an award in the OASIS+ general small business category.
GSA decided that Q2’s waiver to use banned communications equipment for a U.S. Agency for International Development contract only applied to that agency and was not a blanket one. Q2 went to the Court of Federal Claims after the Government Accountability Office rejected the company’s argument that the waiver should apply for OASIS+ too.
The judge hearing the case sided with Q2 and ruled on March 14 that GSA did not correctly interpret the ban on contractors using telecom equipment made in China. Q2 was using Huawei Technologies products for the USAID work.
GSA subsequently took a corrective action to re-evaluate Q2’s bid and awarded the company an OASIS+ seat on Monday, according to a Sam.gov notice. Q2 joins a group of 1,373 general small business track winners announced in December.
In Q2’s complaint, the company provided detail on how it received the waiver from the Director of National Intelligence for the USAID contract.
The DNI’s office is one of two avenues for contractors to receive such waivers as outlined in Section 889 of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. Avenue number two allows for contractors to get waivers from an agency head on a limited time and scope, while the DNI waivers do not have the same limitations.
But as Judge Molly Silfen found, GSA applied the statute regarding DNI waivers too broadly in this instance. Q2’s bid for an OASIS+ position did disclose the usage of Huawei equipment for its USAID work in Egypt, but also added the latter contract is the only instance where the company does so.
GSA’s interpretation of how the waivers work essentially hinged on the agency-head process and not the one involving DNI. The judge determined the clearest way of reading the DNI waiver subsection of Section 889 holds that contractors are not prohibited from winning other government contracts that would not use the covered equipment.
With the court ruling and GSA’s corrective action, Q2 is now eligible to pursue task orders under the OASIS+ vehicle that has no ceiling for its potential 10-year duration. The period of performance covers an initial five-year base period and a single five-year option.