We’re back with our third and final installment of our ITES-3S to 4S series! Our last blog featured an overview of select major ITES-3S task orders awarded. This blog quickly explores aspects of contract award decisions and protests related to ITES-3S task order awards.
Protests…what drives them on ITES-3S?
Even with no protests being allowed for task orders under $25 million in value, there are still plenty of protests against ITES-3S decisions. What can we learn from a sample of these protests?
Why are these task order awards protested?
We sampled protests for each reason that led to a protest being filed. Below are some of the more common reasons.
- Improper best-value trade-off
- Technical factor evaluation
- Management factor evaluation
- Past performance evaluation
- Use of unstated evaluation criteria
- Misleading discussions
- Unequal access to information and OCI
Wait a minute! What happened to cost realism? That’s a fan favorite in protests. In seriousness, many protests challenge cost realism as the basis or one of several aspects of a protest. When it comes to ITES-3S, pricing reasonableness is the overarching focus thereby making realism mostly a moot topic. Realism was considered, but not nearly as much of a focus as reasonableness.
In our observable data, the non-cost evaluation factors (technical, management, past performance) were challenged on the protester and winner’s proposals in nearly equal frequencies.
Many bidder issues centered around staffing strategies which led to weaknesses in non-cost evaluations.
Misapplication of evaluation criteria comes down to allegations that the government did not follow its own stated evaluation criteria.
Claims of protesters being entitled to more strengths usually came from a winning bidder “offering the same thing” but received a strength. This is indicative of a bidder failing to make a compelling case to win. This is also sometimes connected to another basis of protest of being the incumbent and the bidder believing they are entitled to more strengths.
OCI issues and unequal access to information were often blended based on allegations of a winning bidder having a role on a related contract to the targeted opportunity and therefore insider information or personal connections / key hires that allegedly gave inside information that enabled a higher evaluated score for the winner.
Misleading discussions and negotiations usually centered on allegations that the government was under some obligation to share more information or potentially misleading a bidder through discussions.
In most cases, protests were denied or dismissed.
Observations on ITES-3S / CHESS decision trends
CHESS is a value buyer overall. Some may debate this because of the reputation of ITES-3S labor rates being overall low compared to other contracts. More specifically, if the labor rates are already low the notion of a value vs. discount buyer is inherently skewed because baseline labor rates are already so low. This is a fair point, but understand we are using ITES-3S award data and trends, so just keep that in context.
Compared to other agencies, CHESS exhibited some very stingy scoring of strengths. The impact of fewer strengths given in evaluations means any strength earned has great impact on non-cost scores.
Building on the stingy scoring of strengths, if a bidder could create a significant non-cost gap between themselves as a competitor, a pricing premium could be realized.
CHESS is much more interested in cost reasonableness than realism. Some realism concerns were a factor when it created risk in staff retention.
Evaluation factors varied wildly from competition to competition which is unusual as many IDIQs have some level of standard evaluation factors used. This made it difficult to predict what to expect, but it is consistent with an incredibly varied user base as featured in a previous blog.
Even through reviewing protests, it was painfully evident that evaluators put their “finger on the scale” often to get exactly what they wanted. We know this happens many times in competitions, but the blatant behavior was unusual.
The FedSavvy Strategies Takeaway
- ITES-3S bidders can realize pricing premiums, but it is difficult to achieve.
- CHESS is stingy in terms of scoring strengths making each of the few strengths they scored as incredibly impactful in obtaining higher adjectival ratings.
- Cost reasonableness was much more routinely evaluated instead of cost realism.
- Evaluation factors used varied wildly from competition to competition, which is consistent with the wildly varying different customers using ITES-3S.
Check out our entire series of ITES-3S blogs and FedAgency Insight analyses to enhance your knowledge of this competitive market including our ITES-3S specific FedAgency Insight.
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