GAO Dismisses Protest in Army Task Order Award Dispute
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently dismissed a protest filed by Operations Services, Inc. (OSI) concerning the Department of the Army’s issuance of a task order to Logmet, LLC. The decision, issued on February 18, 2025, highlights key issues surrounding solicitation requirements, proposal evaluations, and protest eligibility under GAO’s bid protest regulations. OSI’s protest was primarily based on a misstatement of the solicitation’s requirements and speculation regarding the contents of Logmet’s proposal, which ultimately led to the dismissal of its claims.
The dispute originated from a request for task order proposals (RTOP) issued by the Army on May 21, 2024, to support the Contingency Operations Warehouse for the XVIII Airborne Corps. The RTOP sought fixed-price proposals from service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses under the General Services Administration’s multiple award schedule contracts. The Army structured the competition as a lowest-price technically acceptable (LPTA) procurement, with evaluation factors including mission capability and price.
OSI’s proposal was initially rejected for failing to meet the staffing approach subfactor, as the company had proposed fewer full-time equivalent personnel (FTEs) than the Army’s historical workload data suggested. The Army determined that OSI did not sufficiently justify how its reduced staffing levels could still meet contract requirements. In response to OSI’s protest, the Army opted to take corrective action, reopening discussions and allowing offerors to submit revised proposals. OSI then increased its proposed staffing levels and price, but Logmet ultimately won the award again as the lowest-priced, technically acceptable offeror.
OSI’s renewed protest primarily argued that the Army should have required all offerors to match the historical staffing levels and that Logmet likely proposed fewer than 19 FTEs, making its proposal technically unacceptable. OSI attempted to “reverse-engineer” Logmet’s pricing to infer its staffing approach, but the GAO dismissed this as speculation. Additionally, OSI’s assumption that the solicitation mandated historical staffing levels was incorrect. The RTOP permitted offerors to propose alternative staffing approaches as long as they sufficiently justified their ability to meet contract requirements.
The GAO reaffirmed that protests must be based on factual allegations rather than speculation. A protester must establish a reasonable potential that its allegations have merit, and GAO does not consider challenges founded solely on conjecture. Moreover, OSI’s challenge to Logmet’s eligibility, based on allegations of an unfair competitive advantage, was also dismissed as untimely since it was not raised when corrective actions were first announced.
This decision underscores certain principles in federal procurement, including the flexibility agencies have in evaluating proposals and the necessity for protesters to base their challenges on substantiated claims rather than assumptions. The case serves as a reminder that offerors must carefully justify their approaches in competitive procurements and that speculative arguments regarding a competitor’s proposal are unlikely to succeed at GAO.
Disclaimer: This blog post provides a summary of a GAO decision and is for informational purposes only. It is not a guarantee of accuracy and does not constitute legal advice.