Link: GAO Opinion
Agency: Department of the Army
Disposition: Protest denied.
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GAO Protest:
Agency reasonably limited competition for renovation services to holders of indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity, multiple-award, task-order contracts, where the record shows that this acquisition approach was necessary to meet the agency’s urgent requirements.
General Counsel P.C. Highlight:
Trison contends that the Army’s decision to limit the competition to existing MATOC holders is inconsistent with its proposed corrective action. The protester argues that the goals of the protest system are circumvented where the agency does not promptly implement its promised corrective action. Following the July 17 dismissal of Trison’s prior protest, agency officials met on July 21 to consider how to satisfy the agency’s urgent requirements; among the acquisition methods considered were whether to resolicit under a new IFB or to conduct a limited competition among MATOC holders. The agency concluded that, if it resolicited under a new IFB, award would likely not be made until mid-October, which the agency believed would likely not leave sufficient time for completion of the renovation services by June. The Army decided that it would conduct a limited competition among MATOC holders to satisfy its requirements.
GAO finds that the record provides no basis to conclude that the agency acted unreasonably in deciding to restrict the resolicitation of the renovation services to MATOC holders to satisfy the agency’s urgent requirements. Although Trison complains that the agency waited 12 days to decide how to reprocure the requirement after taking corrective action in response to the prior protest, the protester does not assert that the agency lacks an urgent basis for the completion of these renovation services by June 2010, nor show that the agency’s urgent requirement could be timely satisfied by issuing a new IFB. Given that the agency reasonably found that resoliciting these requirements under a new IFB would not timely satisfy its urgent requirements, GAO has no basis to object to the agency’s decision not to issue a new IFB. The protest is denied.