Aronson

Ok and again thanks for the information. In the quoted protest the higher technically rated company had the higher price so there was a legitimate trade off decision. If however one company had both a higher technical rating and a lower cost it would seem that awarding the contract to another offeror would be more difficult although apparently possible.

"The Government reserves the right to eliminate from consideration for award any or all offers at any time prior to award of the contract." Thank you for your response - that clarifies this for me. The reason I asked about them not even considering the bid of the company the Contracting Officer "wants to get rid of" was because of the phrase above that is in the solicitation. I guess it doesn't matter though since as you said he can ignore the recommendation of the technical panel. If the TEP in fact graded my company's proposal as the winning one and the Contracting Officer in fact awards the contract to another company it will make for an interesting debriefing!

Hi, In a recent competition the following phrase was in the RFP: "The Government reserves the right to eliminate from consideration for award any or all offers at any time prior to award of the contract." In addition the Contracting Officer has stated repeatedly he wants to "get rid" of a certain company. He is also chairman of the Technical Evaluation Panel (TEP). Is it legal for him to not allow consideration of a proposal from a company for fear their technical and cost proposals would be found to be superior to the competition? Is there a FAR clause that addresses? Could he just overrule any recommendation of the rest of the members of the TEP and award to the company that came in second?

Hi, I have a small business with a 5 year FFP task order with a government customer that is set to run only a few more months. My customer wants to extend the TO for 6 months past the 5 year mark which is good news but they also want to convert the last 6 months to CPFF. I was wondering if anyone ever heard of this type of thing - that is changing the contract type with only 6 months left on a task order and an extension at that. We won this bidding it as FFP and now that we have a great team onboard and there is actually less risk as far as finding the right people etc they want to change the contract type. This means a lot more accounting headaches etc etc. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi, I own a small business that has about 25 people. We do almost all of our work for the federal government. Everyone else in the company except for me works on site directly supporting the customer. We go to great expense and effort to find and retain great people to support our customers. This includes extensive and expensive resume searches, interview after interview, and reference checks. We also have generous benefits, frequent social events and go to a lot of trouble to have the people stay on. This is backfiring now though as we have had two of our best employees hired by our customers over the last month. Also I know of at least 4 additional employees working under a couple of different contracts who our customers are trying to hire and probably will - unless I take some action. Obviously my company could literally be absorbed by the government if I am not careful. As an example and in the most recent case we had a 5 year contract for one person. They liked the person we had working there so much they converted the position to a government billet and basically forced her to take the civil servant position doing the exact same job. Then they cancelled our 5 year contract for convenience - in the middle of the first option year and giving my company less than two weeks notice of the termination. Thus they basically used my company as a recruiting company without paying a recruiting fee - which is often some major percent of one years salary. I was planning on earning back the recruiting expenses etc over the 5 year period but now will be lucky to break even and will probably lose money on this contract. Also I have had several business development opportunities affected by losing this past performance and it sure doesnt help the morale of the rest of my people - and is a dangerous precedent that encourages everyone to consider doing the same. I asked for some kind of consideration such as an equivalent position somewhere else at the command but was rebuffed. I am submitting an invoice/final settlement proposal within a few weeks. If someone has an idea of what I can include in this invoice would appreciate it. Of course the bigger question is what can be done to keep my customers from hiring the best of my remaining employees - which is definitely about to happen. Thanks!