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November 22, 2019 By cs

GAO clarifies reach of new LPTA restrictions

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 and the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2018 imposed new limitations on when the Department of Defense can use Lowest Price Technically Acceptable source selection methods. 

Just last month, the Department of Defense issued a final rule amending the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement to implement those provisions.  Now, in Inserso Corp., B-417791, B-417791.3, Nov. 4, 2019, GAO has weighed in on what counts as LPTA for purposes of those restrictions.  This decision may indicate a potentially significant limitation on the reach of the NDAA provisions, new DFARS rule, and proposed FAR rule.

In Inserso, the protester argued that the 2017 NDAA restricted not only DoD’s use of an LPTA source selection process, but also the use of (what the protestor labeled) LPTA criteria within the evaluation process.  Specifically, the protester challenged the fact that, under the RFQ, the agency would (1) “first rank quotations according to price, from lowest to highest”; (2) then “evaluate the five lowest-priced quotations as either technically acceptable or unacceptable” (while “reserving the right to evaluate additional quotations”); (3) then “evaluate only technically acceptable quotations under the past performance factor”; and (4) award the task order to the offeror “considered to be the Best Value based upon a price/past performance trade-off” (alteration omitted).  According to the protester, the 2017 NDAA required the agency to conduct a tradeoff between price and technical factors — rather than relegating the technical factor to a pass/fail gating criterion.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.insidegovernmentcontracts.com/2019/11/what-is-lowest-priced-technically-acceptable-gao-clarifies-reach-of-new-lpta-restrictions/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: best value, DFARS, DoD, FAR, lowest cost technically acceptable, lowest price technically acceptable, LPTA, NDAA, technically acceptable

October 20, 2017 By AMK

Does agency’s ‘corrective action’ have any limits?

In a recent case, the Army got dinged in the Court of Federal Claims (COFC) despite – indeed, because of – the agency’s efforts to correct a problematic procurement.

58 offerors bid for the Army’s recompete of its Army Desktop Mobile and Computing contract vehicle, but only 9 proposals were deemed technically acceptable. When 21 of the disqualified bidders protested, the Army took “corrective action.” It reopened the competition, allowing all offerors to submit revised proposals and new prices. But the COFC found that the proposed corrective measure was overbroad. The court’s ruling demonstrates that agencies need to tailor corrective action to procurement’s unique problems.

When the Army sought proposals for a series of IDIQ contracts covering desktop computer computers, notebooks, tablets, printers, and beyond, offerors were to be assessed based on three factors. Those three factors were past performance, technical acceptability, and price. Offerors were required to demonstrate technical acceptability, the primary evaluative criteria, by filling out spreadsheet forms in the RFP.

The Call for Corrective Action

With 58 offerors competing, you would expect many proposals would be deemed acceptable, and that price would then become the primary determinative factor.  But out of all the proposals submitted, only 9 were deemed technically acceptable, and all 9 contractors with technically acceptable proposals were given contract awards. It’s no surprise that 21 disappointed offerors filed protests at GAO. The protestors felt that they had technically acceptable items, but were thwarted by confusing aspects of the required spreadsheets, and had made honest mistakes in filling them out. Those who had guessed correctly how to tackle the ambiguous spreadsheets were rewarded, and those who’d guessed incorrectly lost out.

Keep reading this article at: https://petrillopowell.wordpress.com/2017/09/26/does-an-agencys-corrective-action-have-any-limits/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Army, corrective action, evaluation criteria, GAO, IDIQ, protest, selection criteria, technical evaluation, technically acceptable

April 18, 2016 By AMK

DoD is better defining what lowest price means in contracts

The Defense Department is implementing a major change to the way it awards contracts to companies.
Better Buying Power (BBP) is based on the principle that continuous improvement is the best approach to improving the performance of the defense acquisition enterprise.
Better Buying Power (BBP) is based on the principle that continuous improvement is the best approach to improving the performance of the defense acquisition enterprise.

An April 1, 2016 memo from Claire Grady,  DoD’s director of defense procurement and acquisition policy lessens the onus on source selection officials to justify paying more for their requirements than just lowest cost technically acceptable (LPTA). It also adds some transparency to how the department prices its requirements.

The policy change is part of the Better Buying Power acquisition reforms, which stated the LPTA requirements sometimes ended up costing DoD more money in the long run. A 2013 Market Connections and Centurion Research Solutions study found 65 percent of contractors and 43 percent of government workers thought LPTA hurt long term value for short term savings. Some critics said DoD places too much emphasis on LPTA contracts.

DoD now will try to make clearer the worth of delivering a capability above “technically acceptable” or the minimum requirement when awarding contracts.

Keep reading this article at: http://federalnewsradio.com/defense/2016/04/dod-tweaks-lpta-methods-save-money-help-industry/

See the April 1, 2016 memo from Claire Grady,  DoD’s Director of Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy, here: http://www.acq.osd.mil/dpap/policy/policyvault/USA004370-14-DPAP.pdf

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Better Buying Power, DoD, fair and reasonable price, lowest price technically acceptable, LPTA, price analysis, technically acceptable

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