We’re back! It’s been some time since we dived into the ever entertaining and educational protest decisions as a means to foster more learning on capture strategy and articulating your win story. The Deadly Sins series is going to get a bit of a boost, and it won’t be some lame remake of a classic movie. 😉
We only focus on the last of several protests in this blog. We will leave the lengthy writing to George R.R. Martin. But at least we get ours done quickly! Sorry, George. We’d really like you to wrap up the Song of Fire and Ice despite the abysmal ending of the HBO series.
The FedSavvy Strategies Takeaway
- When a procurement involves advisory phases to recommend for or against a bidder proceeding with more proposal content, and they recommend you proceed no further…they’re just not that into you.
- Once the evaluators have read your corporate experience write-ups and you “tweak it,” Pandora’s Box has already been opened, and your revisions are not likely to matter.
- Less than aggressive identification and mitigation of risks, especially in staffing for a staffing-intensive contract, is not going to convince the customer that you’re the right fit…every risk left unmitigated erodes your chance to win.
- If a core requirement of the contract is addressed with what are perceived to be just addressed by buzz words, there is no credibility, which leads to risk and then more evaluation weaknesses.
- Interpreting new federal guidance for the federal government in a protest as a means to question the validity of an RFP is not likely to have a positive outcome for the bidder/protester. Know your role.
The Contract at Hand
U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division’s Fingerprint Analysis Support Team (FAST) Biometric Services program
Protest Decision Date: May 8, 2025
Leidos has long been a prime contractor with CJIS, and this was originally a hotly contested contract. In the end, it wore down to Leidos vs. ManTech. ManTech protested the award based on disagreeing with the FBI on its evaluation scores, and ManTech also challenged “…asserts that the terms of the solicitation no longer reflect the agency’s requirements and should be amended.”
We’ll get to this part later. Meanwhile, let’s press on with the evaluation itself.
Overall Evaluation
Let’s set the situation up with part of the protest in which ManTech challenges their scores in corporate experience and staffing.
| Evaluation criteria | ManTech | Leidos |
| Corporate Experience | Some Confidence | High Confidence |
| Staffing Approach | Some Confidence | High Confidence |
| Demonstration | Low Confidence | High Confidence |
| Total Evaluated Price | $128,467,487 | $137,696,324 |
| Price Complete, Reasonable, and Realistic | Yes | Yes |
Table 1 – Evaluation scores for Leidos and ManTech across all evaluation factors.
The evaluation overall involved three (3) phases:
- Phase 1
a. Facility clearance – Pass/fail
b. Corporate experience – High, some, or low confidence
c. Staffing approach – High, som,e or low confidence
2. Phase 2, SAFe agile methodology demonstration – High, some, or low confidence
3. Phase 3 – Price
Phases 1 and 2 would include an advisory note to each bidder “reflecting the agency’s recommendation as to whether the vendor should proceed to the next phase.”
Back to the evaluation…
At the end of Phase 1, the FBI provided feedback to ManTech that their quotation was “not among the most highly rated and was not likely to receive an award.”
ManTech pressed on to continue its effort to win.
At the end of Phase 2, the FBI again provided feedback to ManTech that their quotation was “not among the most highly rated and was not likely to receive an award.”
Undeterred, ManTech pressed on to continue its effort to win.
Leidos was selected for the award, and ManTech protested.
Disputing the Evaluation Scores
ManTech challenged its rating on Corporate Experience and Staffing Approach. Some of these errors were fairly mundane, but there are some plot twists and turns to learn.
Corporate Experience
The core issue with the less-than-favorable rating on corporate experience is not overly interesting. In this case, ManTech presented examples of experience which, in the FBI’s evaluation, were mostly operations and maintenance in nature. ManTech disputed this, claiming its experience clearly demonstrated relevant experience. What is interesting here is how ManTech revised its experience as follows:
“ManTech revised its quotation by inserting the words “development, test, integration, and operations support,” deleting one task that used the word “O&M,” and adding several task descriptions.”
Ouch. Whether or not those examples were just poorly reflective of the true work or some panicked revisions happened, we will never know. What is a takeaway here is that we have a Pandora’s Box of Past Performance. Once the narrative is opened, closing it back up is really difficult – if not impossible – to do. First impressions matter.
Staffing Approach
ManTech received some very real concerns in its evaluation, which accumulated into six (6) weaknesses. ManTech’s approach appeared to rely very heavily on incumbent capture with slow hiring of new personnel (but we cannot tell how long ManTech planned to wait to hire replacements). It seemed the FBI expected more aggressive hiring of new personnel during the transition as a contingency plan if ManTech could not secure incumbent personnel. This is really tricky to unpack, except in understanding that, in the judgment of the customer, ManTech did not take as many proactive measures to ensure continuity of staffing, which created risk. Any time risk surfaces in evaluations and the bidder isn’t addressing it aggressively, that often creates weaknesses leading to a lower evaluation score.
What’s Your SAFe Word?
At the core of this entire contract opportunity is driving software development using the SAFe Agile methodology. This was an underlying source of weakness in the evaluation in both corporate experience and staffing approach. Comments such as:
- Provided no examples of actually using SAFe Agile processes
- Did not demonstrate a mature understanding of the SAFe framework
- Lacked the SAFe-specific details (not just buzz words)
- Merely placed SAFe terminology on an already existing process
If the point of the overall contract was to use SAFe Agile as the driving force in solution development, and the details are lacking…that is not a path to a win.
Best Value Trade-Off is Flawed?
Not surprisingly, ManTech challenged the overall decision as flawed despite the overall significantly lower ratings. ManTech’s price was 6.7 percent lower than Leidos’s price. However, that was not at any point going to offset the significantly lower overall rating. What is important here is that a slightly lower price is not going to win when an overall non-cost score creates significant risk in the assessment of the evaluators. Not going to happen.
Your RFP Does Not Answer Your Own Mail
This is an unusual basis of protest. ManTech challenged the very validity of the terms of the solicitation as not actually meeting the FBI’s needs.
Say what?
This is specifically connected with guidance via presidential memorandum to have executive branch employees return to in-person work. ManTech challenged that the new guidance changes contractor requirements. However, note that the guidance applies to federal employees in the executive branch. Contractors are not such employees. ManTech challenges that this will still materially change contract performance requirements. The FBI established some on-site requirements.
In the end, the implication here is that the bidder is not in a position to challenge the implementation of presidential memorandums, but instead to respond (or not) to the RFP.
Know Your Competition
Are you curious to learn about your competitors? We routinely collect intelligence on bidding practices and “uniques.” We can help you know if you should pursue a contract or if you’re going to be outmatched. Contact us today.
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