Sparksoft Victorious in $52 Million Data Analytics Task Order Bid Protest

Sparksoft’s protest alleged that the agency’s evaluation disparately treated the quotations of RELI and Sparksoft regarding the companies’ corporate experience and oral presentations and failed to follow the solicitation’s requirements in making the best value tradeoff determination.  GAO agreed with Sparksoft’s arguments.

The decision found that the agency had relied on unsupported assumptions to minimize the impact of RELI’s lack of relevant corporate experience in the most important evaluation factor where Sparksoft’s quotation had the advantage. GAO also found the agency relied on unsupported assumptions to assign RELI a strength in the oral presentation, the second most important evaluation factor, where RELI had the advantage. Regardless of flaws in the technical evaluation, GAO found the award decision was flawed because “the agency improperly diminished the importance of cooperate experience in the award decision.”  “[T]he agency’s award decision was unreasonable because it relied on the flawed evaluation of the proposal under the oral presentation and corporate experience factors, and because the agency’s award decision was not consistent with the solicitation’s award criteria regarding corporate experience and relied on unsupported assumptions,” GAO concluded.

The Pillsbury protest team was led by Government Contracts & Disputes partner David Dixon and included associates Toghrul Shukurlu and Robert Starling, all in Northern Virginia.

To learn more about the bid protest, click here.