MAPS protest ruling exposes FAR overhaul’s clause confusion
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By
Nick Wakeman
The Government Accountability Office denied four protests, but also flagged how class deviations from the Federal Acquisition Regulation Overhaul can muddy solicitations.
In setting up its MAPS professional services contract, the Army used parts of the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul in some areas of the solicitation and traditional FAR requirements in other parts.
That led four companies to lodge protests, where they complained that the Army caused confusion as industry was preparing bids for the Marketplace for the Acquisition of Professional Services.
The Government Accountability Office was left to sort that out. GAO came down in favor of the Army, but the ruling still shows the risks involved as the market transitions to a new FAR.
GAO released its redacted decision on Tuesday that covers protests from Kearney & Co., NextGen Federal Systems, Integral Federal and Alpha Tech Alliance. GAO denied all four challenges on Sept. 21 and those decisions cleared the last of the protests against MAPS.
The most consequential part of the ruling involves an argument GAO could have thrown out.
Alpha Tech, a mentor-protégé joint venture of Synertex and Titan Technologies, argued the solicitation was internally inconsistent.
Some clauses were tagged as RFO deviations and others carried standard FAR clauses. One clause even appeared in both versions.
GAO said that even though Alpha Tech was too late to raise that argument, which was lodged more than a month after proposals closed, the watchdog agency decided on the issue anyway under its "significant issue" exception.
GAO said the intermingling of the codified FAR and RFO class deviations is of widespread interest to the procurement community, and that it had not addressed the question before.
The challenged clauses were either unchanged by the RFO or substantively identical in both versions. GAO ultimately sided with the Army.
But GAO also acknowledged that the class deviation process may leave offerors unable to determine from a solicitation which version of a clause applies. GAO characterized Alpha Tech's complaint as frustration with a systemic lack of clarity rather than a concrete defect in MAPS.
GAO also noted that the FAR Council's formal rulemaking so far skips parts 8, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16. Those are the rules that govern most federal buying, from schedule orders to negotiated procurements to task order competitions.
GAO's overall verdict on the solicitation was blunt -- MAPS is "not a model of clarity," but is clear enough to pass muster.
The oversight agency also rejected challenges to how the Army bundled its requirements and the impact that would have on small businesses.
MAPS combines the RS3 and ITES-3S vehicles and will become the Army's primary contract for staff augmentation and technology support. MAPS has a five-year base and a single five-year option.