Polaris small business protests continue as GSA seeks to update the administrative record

The General Services Administration made awards this week for two pools of Polaris small business categories, but the legal battle surrounding the general small business category continues.

Work on the case was delayed because Justice Department and U.S. Court of Federal Claims operations were limited during the government shutdown.

After the Nov. 13 reopening, Justice Department attorneys handling the case for GSA asked the court for another delay so they could update the administrative record of the Polaris procurement. The administrative record is like a case file and contains documents and records such as the solicitation, proposals, evaluation materials, and source selection documents.

The lawyers told the court they would upload the corrected record today (Friday, Nov. 21). The protesters will then review the documents. By Dec. 1, the government and the protesters will propose a new schedule.

There are six active protests at the court filed by Beat-LDI JV, Gencetek, OM Partners JV2, Assyst, DevTech Systems and Rigil Corp. The protests have been combined into a single case because the allegations are similar.

The companies are challenging how GSA evaluated the self-scoring portion of their proposals, particularly around elements such as relevant experience and project size. The protesters claim GSA did not follow its stated evaluation criteria, which caused the protesters to have lower scores. They are arguing that if their self-scoring points were validated correctly, they would have ranked in the top 100 of bidders and would have received awards.

Polaris is a massive small business contract vehicle that GSA set up for agencies to buy emerging technologies and IT solutions in areas such as artificial intelligence, automation, immersive technology, distributed ledger technology, and edge computing.

GSA has made awards in several pools including HUBZone and service-disabled/veteran-owned. The pool under protest involves the general small business pool. Still to come are awards for women-owned small businesses.