Detail Your University Partnerships or Go Home
Army awarded $780M for a test support contract to the incumbent. Protestor argued that agency failed to properly consider the incumbent's past performance on a different contract. And, in fact, the GAO found that the government failed to consider the incumbent's negative CPARS evaluation. And yet, GAO found no competitive prejudice because the CPARS evaluation was not enough to meaningfully change the agency's confidence levels in the incumbent. Additionally, GAO noted that the protestor's argument on the management approach failed because the incumbent's "more detailed approach" with regard to university partnerships "described benefits warranted a significant strength while [the protestor's] less detailed description of its university partnership approach did not." Despite a $55 million price premium, the government's best value determination was left alone and the protest was denied.