We’re back with our third and final installment of our SeaPort NxG series! Our last blog featured an overview of select major task orders awarded. This blog quickly explores aspects of contract award decisions and protests.
Specifics on incumbent contractors and their largest re-competes over 2024-2025 has been captured in 80+ pages of material featured here.
Do you know how these competitions have gone? Read on for a primer!
Protests…what drives them on SeaPort NXG?
Even with no protests being allowed for task orders under $25 million in value, there are still plenty of protests against SeaPort-NXG 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.
- Cost realism issues
- Improper best-value trade-off decision
- Challenged technical factor evaluation
- Evaluation was inconsistent with terms of solicitation
- Challenged past performance evaluation
- Protester should have received more strengths
- Allegations of unequal access to information
- Challenged management factor evaluation
- OCI issues
- Challenge risk assessment regarding management or teaming approach
- Engaged in misleading discussions by the government
- Entitled to better ratings due to incumbency
Some of these warrant some explanation. Cost realism was the most common basis for protest. These often involved cost adjustments upwards or protesters claiming a winning bidder’s price was just not realistic. This is also typical in many other protests outside of SeaPort NXG task orders.
Challenging individual evaluation factors centered on the technical factor most commonly which usually connected to the core services or aspects of a task order’s planned performance.
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.
Decisions, decisions, decisions!
SeaPort NXG is a driving force to buy an incredible array of professional services across the U.S. Department of the Navy. While the SeaPort NXG contract vehicle is driven by Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), customers across the Navy place orders against SeaPort-NXG to fulfill many of their professional services needs.
The two predominant customers for SeaPort-NXG are (per our earlier blog):
- Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA)
- Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR)
These two agencies drive the spend and activity. Others are meaningful users, but NAVWAR and NAVSEA account for over two thirds of total spend and task order awards.
Knowing that these two large customers drive the market flowing through SeaPort, we examine trends in their decisions. This is just a snapshot of what we explore in more detail via our FedAgency Insight reports.
We will briefly consider observations on each core SeaPort NXG customer along these lines:
- Openness to awarding task orders with a pricing premium vs. low cost
- Trends in scoring strengths and weaknesses in non-cost evaluation factors
- Observable behavior in cost realism vs. reasonableness
- Attitude towards incumbents
Observations on NAVSEA decision trends
NAVSEA is a decidedly thrifty buyer overall. They can and they will allow task order awards to higher priced bidders if the bidder fits a certain profile of value and consistently demonstrates specific strengths. They will absolutely award task orders to lower priced and technically lower rated bidders, too.
NAVSEA was surprisingly liberal with scoring strengths and weaknesses compared to other agencies leading to more opportunities to score a strength, but this can create a sense of grade inflation.
NAVSEA is much more interested in cost realism than reasonableness and they use a wide variety of mechanisms to determine realism. This contrasts to other agencies who have a more limited set of resources they use consistently across competitions. Understanding what mechanism NAVSEA will use is important as it varies wildly.
Incumbents are not impressive in many cases and NAVSEA has often structured RFPs to reduce incumbent advantage.
Observations on NAVWAR decision trends
NAVWAR is more of a value buyer compared to NAVSEA with a modestly higher overall allowance for pricing premiums on winning bidders.
Interestingly enough, NAVWAR was stingy in scoring strengths in proposals so any strength earned was more impactful in scoring than in NAVSEA contract competitions.
NAVWAR focused solely on realism or a blend of realism and reasonableness measures when doing a pricing evaluation. Similar to NAVSEA, NAVWAR used a variety of measures to evaluate realism, but their methods varied less than NAVSEA.
Incumbency was not very advantageous in the sense that it was not an inherent strength, but potentially a risk mitigator.
The FedSavvy Strategies Takeaway
- NAVWAR is generally more interested in value than being as price sensitive as NAVSEA.
- NAVSEA was far more liberal in terms of scoring strengths, but NAVWAR was stingy making each of the few strengths they scored as incredibly impactful in obtaining higher adjectival ratings.
- Those higher ratings were critical to obtain pricing premiums for NAVWAR bidders compared to NAVSEA in which even very highly rated proposals rarely generated significant premiums.
- Cost realism was largely a concern for both agencies, but each had different playbooks to drive a cost realism evaluation.
- Incumbency was not very meaningful without clear definition of how it mitigated risk.
Check out our entire series of SeaPort blogs and FedAgency Insight analyses to enhance your knowledge of this competitive market.
© FedSavvy Strategies and FedSavvy Strategies blog, 2012-2024. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to FedSavvy Strategies and FedSavvy Strategies blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
