The Government Accountability Office this week released an advisory opinion indicating it would have objected to the Army's price reasonableness evaluation for the U.S. European Command theater under the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program V.
Fluor was one of multiple contractors to file protests over the LOGCAP V awards, which were announced last summer. An initial protest was dismissed by GAO, but Fluor then filed additional protests, GAO notes in the document dated Nov. 5, 2019 and released yesterday.
DynCorp International, which also bid on the program, filed an unsuccessful protest with GAO and later took the matter to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. As a result, GAO dismissed the remaining protests. However, the court requested GAO's advisory opinion, which lays out the merits of the protests.
"Fluor effectively challenged every aspect of the Army's evaluation," GAO writes. "Fluor alleged that the agency unreasonably evaluated proposals under every evaluation factor, conducted a disparate evaluation in holding Fluor's proposal to a more stringent standard than the awardees' proposals, failed to conduct meaningful discussions, and failed to adequately document the evaluations."
GAO backs much of the Army's work, noting that the agency's evaluation and resulting tradeoff determinations were in most respects "reasonable, adequately documented, and in accordance with applicable procurement law, regulations, and the [request for proposals'] terms."
However, GAO adds, it would have found "that the Army's price reasonableness evaluation for the EUCOM task order was inconsistent with [the] terms of the RFP, and, therefore, would have objected to the agency's actions on that limited basis."
According to the opinion, the Army rated both Fluor and KBR, which won EUCOM, as outstanding in the technical/management category. Fluor received a satisfactory rating for past performance confidence, while KBR was rated substantial; in small business participation, Fluor received a good rating, while KBR received an outstanding rating. Fluor's evaluated price was $180 million, while KBR's was $183 million.
GAO notes the Army did not evaluate either KBR's cost or price for reasonableness before making the award.