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The GOA has been busy...

The U.S. Government Accountability Office's (GOA's) has decided to deny the protest of the U.S. Navy's Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Unmanned Aircraft System (BAMS UAS) source selection. As a result, Northrop Grumman Corporation is beginning work under the prime contract.

"The GAO's ruling underscores that the Navy conducted a fair and open competition to choose a provider for the service's newest UAS for intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance missions," says a company representative.

"We are very pleased that the GAO has upheld the Navy's source selection decision for the BAMS UAS program," says Ronald D. Sugar, Northrop Grumman chairman and chief executive officer. "This reaffirms that Northrop Grumman's offering was selected as the best-value determination in a fair and open competition. We look forward to getting back to work on this critical program for our Navy customer."

Lots of contracts seem to have been hotly protested lately. Is this indicative of the increased competitiveness resultant from a downturned economy? Or is something fishy going on? What do you say? Weigh in!

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Permalink Reply by MLS on September 3, 2008 at 1:56pm: As long as a protest only takes a 42 cent stamp, there is little inpediment to filing a protest. Best value contracts do encourage more protests than lowest bid. Unless there are blatent irregularities between offers, lowest bid protests are mostly resolved to the lowest bidder. As we have learned by several contracting disasters, contractor buy-in, unconscionable terms and conditions, and failure to read the requirements of the RFP can result. Best value is a subjective measure, and as such without firm metrics on the scoring arguable awards can result. Best value awards can also be failed contracts. There seem to be two versions of protest:

1. We should have won and we have a story to tell the GAO. We will grill the Government buyers until one of them gives us enough evidence to sustain the protest.

2. Our main competitor won, we will keep the protest machine working as long as possible to deprive him from income and maybe steal some key employees as well.

The first type is why protests exist. The second type, if found to have no merit, should have some penalty attached. Some will argue that the fact of the protest will be a negative mark.
But all major contractors protest from time to time. It's no different than 1973, when I was involved in the first protest of my career.; ▶ Reply to This

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