Fresh protest hits NGA's Clover vehicle
Gettyimages.com/Pattanaphong Khuankaew
By
Nick Wakeman
A new challenge focuses on evaluation criteria rather than registration issues that derailed earlier awards for the $940 million professional services contract.
Unsurprisingly, the protest saga surrounding the $940 million Clover contract continues following the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s decision to make new awards.
This time around, the protest has nothing to do with the registration technicalities that caused NGA to re-evaluate proposals. Assertive Professionals LLC is instead questioning why points were deducted from its self-scoring sheets, effectively eliminating the company from the competition.
Clover is NGA’s small business contract for acquisition support such as acquisition management, financial management, and strategic business management.
NGA made five awards in May 2023, but subsequent protests claimed that some of those winners should have been disqualified because their registration had not been continuously active on Sam.gov. NGA tried to issue its own deviation to the FAR requirement, but a Court of Federal Claims judge said the agency did not have the authority to do that.
NGA has since re-evaluated proposals and named five winners of Clover: Compass, Exacta Solutions, Innovate Now, Logic Gate and ProCleared.
Assertive filed a bid protest on Monday at the Government Accountability Office after those awards.
NGA used a self-scoring methodology for the procurement that measured relevant experience, size and complexity of prior projects, and quality of past performance. In evaluating Assertive’s scores, NGA deducted points based on the supporting documents Assertive submitted to validate its score.
Assertive is challenging those deductions.
GAO is expected to make a ruling by Dec. 31.