Link: GAO Opinion
Agencies: General Services Administration
Disposition: Protest sustained.
Keywords: FSS contract
General Counsel, P.C. Highlight: When a concern arises that a vendor is offering services outside the scope of its GSA Schedule contract, the relevant inquiry is not whether the vendor is willing or able to provide the services that the agency is seeking, but whether the services or positions offered are actually included on the vendor’s GSA Schedule contract. If they are not actually included in the GSA Schedule contract, the offeror is not eligible for award of a task order.
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The General Services Administration (GSA) issued a request for quotations (RFQ) under Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) 84 for construction site security services to ensure that the finished facility would obtain sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) accreditation from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). American Security Programs, Inc. (ASP), the protestor, and Coastal International Security, Inc. (CIS), the awardee, were two of the three total vendors that responded to the RFQ. After the task order was issued to CIS, ASP protested on the basis that CIS was ineligible for the award because it did not offer all the services required by the RFQ on its FSS contract.
The FSS program, as overseen by GSA, provides federal agencies with a simplified process for obtaining commonly used commercial supplies and services, but one that still satisfies all requirements for full and open competition. An agency can choose to order items using GSA FSS procedures, but all items or services must be within the scope of the vendor’s existing FSS contract. In this protest, ASP claimed that one of the services listed in the RFQ, Construction Site Security Program Management services, was outside the scope of CIS’s FSS contract. ASP distinguishes the tasks required for this service as being professional and consulting in nature, rather than the rest of the enumerated required services, which dealt more with protective services.
In instances where a protest alleges that certain services (or supplies) are outside the scope of a vendor’s FSS contract, GAO must determine whether the services are actually included on the vendor’s contract as reasonably interpreted. Here, GAO determined that the services required by this particular RFQ exceeded those that CIS currently had on its existing GSA Schedule contract. The site-specific plan and ability to coordinate with related agencies were outside the scope of the supervisory positions that CIS described, and therefore, GAO stated that CIS’s quotation should not have been viewed as having met the RFQ’s requirements. GAO then recommended that the agency issue the task order to the vendor that was next in line for selection and recommended that ASP’s costs of filing and pursuing the protest be reimbursed.