GSA faces third protest of OASIS solicitation

Aljucar, Anvil-Incus & Co. has now filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office a week after losing its agency-level protest over what the comp...

The multi-billion dollar OASIS contract for professional services is facing its third protest.

Aljucar, Anvil-Incus & Co. has now filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office a week after it lost its agency-level protest at the General Services Administration.

Rudy Sutherland, the head of practice for Aljucar, Anvil-Incus, said the company filed with GAO because it believes GSA is restricting the ability of small business to bid on the One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services (OASIS) contract as a joint venture. The governmentwide contract could be worth $60 billion, including $13 billion for small businesses, over the 10-year life of the contract.

“GSA has made it a top priority to work closely with both our industry and federal partners throughout the OASIS RFP process,” a GSA spokesperson told Federal News Radio. “As part of our strategy to ensure small business opportunity and participation, the OASIS solicitation includes a program called OASIS Small Business, which is a 100 percent small business set aside. GSA urges industry to consider both solicitations carefully and to submit any questions to clarify any confusion around small business participation. On Sept. 12 an agency-level protest against GSA’s OASIS solicitation filed by Aljucar, Anvil-Incus, Inc. was denied in its entirety by the agency protest official. GSA remains optimistic that this second protest filed by Aljucar, Anvil-Incus, Inc. with GAO will be resolved in a similar manner.”

Sutherland said Aljucar, Anvil-Incus claims GSA is unfairly restricting the evaluation of past performance of small businesses who bid on the contract as a joint venture.

The company claims GSA did not do valid market research and therefore has no “reasonable basis for the restrictive experience requirement,” nor does the restriction on the competition “pass the logical scrutiny test.”

Sutherland said Aljucar, Anvil-Incus claims OASIS “will not provide meaningful opportunity for small businesses.”

Aljucar, Anvil-Incus also claims OASIS restricts small businesses’ ability to compete for task orders.

Sutherland said GSA’s approach doesn’t require any notice or checks to see if the work could be done by small businesses before putting out the request for quote.

“If awards are made under OASIS unrestricted without at least one or more going to a venture comprised of smalls (whose best interest it is to keep the other side honest), the result may be the equivalent of Wall Street in the 1980s when the financial markets were de-regulated and large banks were left to pursue their own interests unabated…and we all know how that ultimately played out,” Sutherland said. “However, in this case – ‘Main Street’ is being recast as the small business community while the banks are replaced by large contractors. In sum, this is as much about fighting to maintain access to actionable procurement information for commercial survival as it is our profit motive and desire for a level competitive playing field. The contract framework of OASIS will serve as the benchmark for federal procurement for decades to come.”

USFalcon filed the other protest with GAO, but dropped it in August.

GSA recently extended the due date for bids on OASIS until Oct. 10.

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