In light of today's emphasis on acquisiiton speed, especially by the Department of War, we think this is an urgent matterr that Wifcon members ought to discuss:

In CWTSato Travel, Comp. Gen. Dec. B-423181,2, Dec. 19, 2025, the GAO denied a protest GSA's award of an order for commercial travel agent services against a Federal Supply Schedule. The decision is attached.

In a procurement for the Marine Corps, GSA issued a request for quotations in accordance with FAR 8.405-2 on August 19, 2024. Here is what the quotes were to include, as described by the GAO:

Vendors were instructed to organize their quotations into four files: administrative, technical, non-technical, and pricing. AR, Tab 10, RFQ amend. 4 at 168. The technical file was to be arranged as eight documents, including, as relevant, a technical quote, a transition plan, a quality control plan, a key personnel plan, and a personnel workforce plan. Id. at 169-171.

The technical quote document was to provide a description of the firm's experience and knowledge as a TMC and its “industry knowledge, experience, ability, and expertise” for making both contractor-assisted travel arrangements and arrangements made using an online booking tool. Id. at 169. The technical approach document was to explain the vendor's approach to each element of the PWS, including “clear, concise, actionable, and logical strategies and approaches,” timeframes and objectives. Id. The personnel workforce plan was to set out the number of agents that would work in each on-site location, along with the vendor's approach to providing “24/365 (business hours and outside business hours) uninterrupted travel services” that would ensure customer needs are not compromised during business hours and outside of business hours, and an approach to managing surges in call volume while maintaining the required service levels. Id. at 171. The personnel workforce plan was also required to provide the ratio of vendor personnel to the number of transactions and describe in detail the methodology for determining staffing levels. Id.

The GAO described the evaluation factors as follows:

Quotations would be evaluated using five evaluation factors: factor A--travel management company passenger name record validation; factor B--technical approach; factor C--past performance; factor D--small business participation; and factor E--price. Id. at 176. Factor A would be evaluated on a pass/fail basis, and factor D would be evaluated on an acceptable/unacceptable basis. Id. Factors B and C would be evaluated qualitatively and were equally weighted. Id. In selecting a vendor, the agency would make a best-value tradeoff where the non-price factors, when combined, were significantly more important than price.

There were the final evaluation results for the protester, CWTSato, and the awardee:

	CWTSato	Omega
Factor A	Pass	Pass
Factor B	Good	Good
Factor C	Very Relevant / Limited Confidence / High Risk	Relevant / Substantial Confidence / Low Risk
Factor D	Acceptable	Acceptable
Factor E - POS Pricing	$18,366,418	$24,701,978
Factor E - MSF Pricing	$18,366,418	$24,702,974

According to the GAO, the contracting officer decided to pay the higher "price" based on the evaluations of past performance.

It appears to have taken the GSA more than a year to complete its commericial FSS selection/award process, which was clearly based on the FAR Part 15 process model. See https://www.wifcon.com/anal/analcomproc.htm

Some questions:

1. Did anything in FAR 8.405-2 require GSA to use such a procedure?

2. Could they have asked for experience and past performance information and price, without the other stuff, selected Omega on that basis, and then negotiated performance plans and procedures one-on-one with them before making the award, without further communications with CWTSato? If not, why not?

3. Would that have taken less work and time?

4. If so, why do you think they conducted the procurement the way they did?

GAO B-423181.2.pdf

1. No

2. Yes

3. In competent hands

4. I don't know. One thing I have noticed in my experience is that giving a contracting officer the authority to be efficient is not enough to make them efficient. What you described in #2 is efficient, but some contracting officers are just too chicken sh#! to try anything that hasn't been done before. So, that's part of it.

   When teaching source selection, one of my favorite exercises is to have students devise a method to select a contractor to fulfill a need. They are to assume that they do not work for the Government and they have never heard of the FAR. Any reference to the FAR or using any FAR Speak is prohibited. They are just business people trying to solve a business problem. The objective is to do what's best for the company. The students would typically come up with procedures that were efficient, rational, and even creative. After they presented their procedure, I then tasked them to identify any rules in the FAR or DFARS that would prohibit the use of their procedure if it were used in a Federal procurement. They typically couldn't find anything. Some students understood the lesson, but others still feared a protest even though they couldn't identify any reasonable basis for one. It just didn't feel right to them. It's not what they are used to, so something must be wrong with it. This mindset is pervasive in Federal acquisition.

I agree with Don's points. Although, I wouldn't always put it on the Contracting Officer. Agencies are just as guilty. In my experience, you can have all the ideas in the world about executing an acquisition more efficiently. Only for your ideas to be turned away because the agency doesn't want to mess up their process. The idea of CO descretion only works if agencies allow their COs to use it.

GSA re-used a previous solicitation for a very similar travel agent requirement, from 2021, which has seemingly identical convoluted evaluation factors. No way this 190 page+ solicitation was written in 2020. If that office is anything like every other contracting office, the original document was written many years ago and is passed around the office whenever one of these sorts of requirements comes up.

I am sympathetic. The last time the solicitation had (probably) 200+ pages and eight or so factors, was protested, GSA fumbled its corrective action and ultimately ended up paying protestor costs. The final documents that came out of that mess surely include hard-won lessons. Why discard that and start anew? Even if the CO thinks she can probably strip out six of those evaluation factors and slim the solicitation down to 10 pages, her management, which remembers paying the lawyer fees last time, will immediately shoot her down, so why bother? Just change the names & dates, update the clauses, and move on.

Edit: This story is why things don't change and why people don't learn. I am sympathetic to my imagined CO, but not in agreement.

CW Government Travel, Inc.--Costs | U.S. GAO

Edited January 27Jan 27 by General.Zhukov
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