Federal Construction Contracting Blog : Federal Construction Contracting Law Firm : Cohen Seglias Pallas Greenhall & Furman PC : Construction Law, Dredging and Claims

The Commander of the Air Force Material Command, General Bruce Carlson, recently told reporters at a forum sponsored by Aviation Week that there should be some sort of penalty for protests that are found to be unwarranted.   It was reported that the General said “that some losing bidders file protests with 20 or 30 elements when perhaps only one part has any foundation.  In recent years, nearly every significant defense contract has been protested by the losers to the Government Accountability Office.”  The comments, which were reported by GovernmentExecutive.com and the Congress Daily, demonstrate a total lack of understanding about the vital need for accountability on the part of federal agencies, contracting officers, and source selection authorities. 

I disagree with the General’s observations.  Government contractors, and the taxpayers, are entitled to a procurement process that is fair and reasonably transparent, and they are entitled to take advantage of the Constitutional right to petition Congress for redress of grievances.  They are also entitled to take advantage of statutory and regulatory procedures authorizing protests against unfair or illegal procurement actions without intimidation or fear of having to pay some sort of “penalty” to the government.   It is interesting that one of the protests that apparently triggered the General’s comments was a challenge by the Sikorsky Aircraft Company and Lockheed Martin Systems to what they contended was an unfair source selection process in the award of a large dollar value contract to The Boeing Company for the Combat Search and Rescue Replacement Vehicle (CSAR-X).  The GAO sustained the protest and found that the Air Force had ignored differences among the proposed aircraft that could have had a material impact on likely O & S costs, and that the Air Force had departed from its stated evaluation approach. (See the attached GAO decision). 

This is not the first time that the Air Force has not followed the procurement regulations and has lost a protest. The General, rather than focusing on the improvement of source selection procedures by his agency, would seek to reduce the number of challenges to Air Force procurements by penalizing unsuccessful protesters.  This, of course, would have the unavoidable effect of reducing the number of successful protests, as well, and would give the Air Force even greater latitude to run roughshod over the procurement regulations.

It is not easy to win a protest before the GAO or the United States Court of Federal Claims. The protester must demonstrate a clear violation of procurement laws or regulations, an abuse of discretion, or a decision by the Contracting Officer that lacked a rational basis. In fact, given the rapidly expanding use of multiple award task order contracting (“MATOC”), where the law prohibits protests against task orders (except in very limited circumstances), government contractors are already precluded from protesting task order solicitations and source selections that they believe are unfair. In addition, great deference is afforded to contracting officers by the GAO and the Court and when protests are sustained there generally is something very wrong in the procurement process. In other words, there are plenty of things built into the system to discourage frivolous protests, including the cost of legal representation, without seeking to impose additional “penalties.”

It must be recognized that there is a statutory and a regulatory right to file a protest, and these rights cannot be denied by agency action alone. The statutory basis for bid protests is found in 28 USC 1491(b)(1), granting the Court of Federal Claims Protest Jurisdiction.  For the GAO the statutory basis is found in 31 USC 3526, the authority to settle accounts.  As provided in Pichel Air Service, 84-1 CPD  108, the basis for the GAO to decide protests is based upon the authority to adjust and settle accounts and to certify balances in the accounts of accountable officers under Pub. L. No. 97-258, § 3526, 96 Stat. 964 (1982) (codified at 31 U.S.C. § 3526).  With account settlement authority, the Comptroller General can take exception to an improper transaction and hold the certifying officer or relevant official personally liable for the amount of money improperly expended. Moreover, his decisions on the expenditures of appropriated funds are binding on the executive branch.” The regulatory basis is found in FAR 33.1, Protests (Agency and GAO protests)  and 4 CFR Part 21 (GAO Bid Protest Regulations) which states that protests may be filed with the GAO.

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The Federal Acquisition Regulation, at FAR 36.201, requires government personnel to be fair and accurate in the evaluation of a construction contractor’s performance, but there is the inherent potential for an unfair and overreaching evaluation. Government personnel are required to use DD Form 2626 for performance evaluations. This form lists five major factors to be evaluated: quality control, effectiveness of management, timely performance, compliance with labor standards and compliance with safety standards.  If, for example, a contractor’s employee has an accident and sustains an injury, a government evaluator could rate the contractor as unsatisfactory for violation of the safety standards, marginal in effectiveness of management (jobsite supervision, compliance with regulations (safety), and marginal in the implementation of its quality control plan. All of this would stem from a single incident. 

     In prosecutorial circles, this is known as “stacking the charges,” meaning that every possible charge is listed so that the prosecutor may plea bargain a deal on a lesser included charge.  However, in the case of a performance evaluation, there is little, if any, “bargaining” with the evaluator. The potential exists for the government evaluator to magnify a single incident into three deficiencies on the contractor’s part, as shown by the real life example above. 

     The consequences of this approach are serious for a government contractor. The regulations permit a contracting officer to review a contractor’s past performance evaluations in making a responsibility determination in a pending contract award. Therefore, it is important for contractors to insure that their performance evaluations are fair and accurate, particularly since the government is required to retain these evaluations for six years. One of the ways that a contractor may address its performance evaluation is by the submission of written comments to the evaluator. The evaluator must review these written comments, include them with the evaluation, and revise the evaluation, if the evaluator believes such a revision is necessary. However, this process is only available to those contractors who receive an overall “Unsatisfactory” performance rating. According to the regulations, the government is not under any obligation to advise a contractor of a “marginal” performance rating.

Because of the retention and use of the performance evaluations, we recommend that every contractor obtain a copy of its performance evaluation when it completes a project over $550,000.00. If the overall evaluation is either marginal or unsatisfactory, the contractor should submit a written rebuttal within thirty days of receipt and request that the evaluating official review and include these written comments with the performance evaluation. The goal, obviously, is to present a fair and accurate representation of the contractor’s performance and to lessen, if not eliminate, the impact of “stacking the charges” in the evaluation.

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