We persuaded the agency to modify the terms of a solicitation so that our client could team with a large business and submit a more competitive proposal.
The Defense Health Agency issued two solicitations for the Medical Q-Coded Support and Services—Next Generation (MQS2-NG) program, one restricted to small businesses and the other unrestricted and thus open to large businesses. The agency intended to award multiple Indefinite-Delivery, Indefinite Quantity contracts under both solicitations for five areas of responsibility covering different parts of the United States, creating two vendor pools for each area, one containing large businesses and the other made up entirely of small businesses. Since offerors earned points on a self-scoring worksheet, they had an incentive to form teams to boost their score and chance of award. The solicitations, however, contained a cross-teaming restriction that discouraged large businesses that wanted to compete in the unrestricted acquisition from teaming with small businesses for award in the small business acquisition.
We filed an agency-level protest arguing that the cross-teaming restriction was unduly restrictive of competition because it inhibited the formation of the most advantageous teams and decreased the competitiveness of the vendor pools. We urged the agency to relax the cross-teaming restriction to allow an offeror in the unrestricted pool to be part of one (and only one) team in the small business pool. This less restrictive requirement would still accomplish the agency’s objectives while affording offerors the flexibility to form more competitive teams. The agency denied our protest, so we protested the agency’s denial at the Government Accountability Office. Before the date for the agency report, the agency agreed to take corrective action and grant the relief our client had requested.
