Government Contracting and the Contract Award Protests
The market has gone crazy with federal government procurement regulations, procurement access and recently procurement award protests.
Here are a couple of scenarios…
Scenario 1 – Your company spends 2 years bidding a job, winning the contract, successfully delivering the services for the 5 years that you were contracted for and then the expected RECOMPETE… (queue in the music bum ba bum bum)
You start the process over again, this time are undercut by a competitor, you lose the contract and then…magically you find a perceived discrepancy in their solution and you decide to protest the award in the hopes that your higher prices were really best value, that you maintained leading edge services and that you were on top of your game with no complacency. But you lost… Now you protest. Or did you lose? What does that accomplish for your company…?
Interestingly the protest period typically allows the incumbent…you, to continue to deliver services, receive revenue while the protest is underway. Imagine a 1500 person staffing engagement, $150M in revenue annually and the protest takes 6 months… you just earned an additional $75M in revenue for your company and you lost!
Scenario 2 – Your Company spends 2 years bidding a multi-award contract. Your firm is awarded the contract, you receive notification have the award party and look forward to delivering services. Then, as you are getting ready to issue the press release…stop the presses… out of the woodwork a number of companies protest the awards because they were not selected. A formal GAO protest is issued, the government halts the awards for review and whammo… the contract is awarded to all companies that submitted bids. Why, a procurement error. How do you feel, you won. Why was there a procurement error? Is this an error, carelessness or is it that in our world of fairness everyone must get a trophy. Why not just submit bids for everything and play the odds?
Procurement in government is expensive, both for the vendors and the government. Procurement is a profession that many of us take for granted and when done properly by professionals provide for fair and honest competition and best in class service at time of award. Professional procurement personnel are hard to find and should be valued by the government agencies. Government must do its best to keep the good procurement personnel and relieve the bad ones of their duties. Use industry to help if needed. Please simplify the procurement process, make it less costly for industry to bid and please never just award to make everyone happy because you dilute the overall reality of competition. Industry must focus on strategic sourcing initiatives and do their homework. It is not about winning but about delivering best in class services and products at a fair price. Protest when wronged but not to keep your contract lawyers in a job.
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