Final Proposals

[duke38]

Does anyone know where I can find info on requesting another round of final proposals from unsuccesful vendors instead of resoliciting when a vendor that won the award was determined not able to perform within days of the contract. Was there ever a protest on this scenerio, or is this legal if you can justify due to urgency of requirement. any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Guest Vern Edwards]

I know of no case in which that was done. Would it be okay? I don't know, but here are some questions:

1. How much time has transpired since the award?

2. Are you terminating the contract for default? (I won't ask why the contract was awarded to the firm.)

3. Was the award announced at FedBizOps?

4. Have the FPR acceptance periods expired?

I think the answers to those questions have a bearing on whether you should do what you're thinking of doing. Urgency is going to be hard to sell, since it's urgent only because you (apparently) screwed up the award.

[Caradoc]

Despite apparent problem with the "responsible" half of determining "responsive and responsible," a memo for file about urgency of the requirement should ring true if the urgency can somehow be related to things like bullets and blood. Such a memo could go on to address unchanged requirement and minimal to no value obtainable from time spent on new solicitation.

Don't like idea of a second round of final proposal revisions. Better to ask the so-far unsuccessful offerors to extend their final revisions for another 15 or 20 days even if acceptance period has lapsed. After all, a proposal remains the property of the Offeror and in hopes of award some or more likely all of them will be willing to extend. (Plus, a little voice in the back of my head cynically asks who among them will be filing a protest on day 9 or 10.)

At the risk of sounding sporty, I'll go further and assert that if only one Offeror extends, reporting the resulting award as competitive would require only another memo explaining the timing of the competitive environment and why no one, including the Offeror, could have expected there'd be only one offer standing at the end of the day.