Too little, too late: GAO dismisses Z SofTech’s SEWP VI protest
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By
Nick Wakeman
The company missed deadlines and filed bare-bone objections in its bid to challenge elimination from the IT competition.
The Government Accountability Office found that protests filed by one small business offered objections that were both too little and too late to challenge NASA’s decision to remove them from the SEWP VI competition.
Z SofTech Solutions first filed an agency-level protest at NASA on Sept. 9.
But NASA rejected the protest because the agency first told the company on July 9 that its past performance volume did not meet the requirements of the solicitation for SEWP VI, the recompete of NASA's popular government-wide IT contract.
The company waited too long to file its protest with NASA, according to GAO’s decision that was unsealed Monday.
NASA rejected the protest on Sept. 17, then Z SofTech had 10 days to file a GAO protest. But the company did not file its GAO protest until Feb. 18.
GAO rejected that protest as being untimely as well. It was just too late for Z SofTech to raise those objections.
But another part of its protest raised different objections to NASA’s evaluation.
The agency also rejected z SofTech’s proposal because of issues with pricing and contract line-item numbers. In this case, the company filed that challenge within 10 days of learning of the issues.
NASA and GAO had problems with that part of the protest because it was a list of general items such as “evaluation contrary to the solicitation,” “unequal treatment,” and “contrary to the question-and-answer guidance.”
That company did not provide any underlying facts.
“As such, we dismiss these allegations for failure to state a valid basis of protest,” GAO wrote.
This was the “too little” part of the protest.
Z SofTech filed a supplemental protest where it tried to provide additional information to support its challenge. GAO rejected that filing too, saying that information should have been part of the original filing. That is another aspect of too late.
This is another cautionary tale for other potential protesters – missed deadlines killed part of z SofTech’s protest and a bare-bones pleading killed the other.
Two other protests involving SEWP VI are still active at GAO.