This is a service contract where the place of performance is in a very inhospitable part of the world where there is only a two-three week window every year to do this type of work. The work is very specialized and extremely dangerous. there are additional factors on this solicitation, but I was concentrating just on the conflicts of interest areas where a company proposes an alternate solution and the government uses that solution to write the SOW. i always believed that if KR wrote specs, they were prohibited from bidding on the resulting solicitation if there were other competitors. I have provided my client with FAR 9 and they can make the determination if it applies to their situation.