Bid Protest Litigation
Our team has a proven record assisting clients with pre- and post-award bid protests in every protest forum, as both protester and intervenor, including specialized ancillary litigation. We have handled protests for a very diverse set of clients across multiple industry sectors, ranging from large aerospace defense and IT companies, to GSA schedule contractors and small businesses. We provide strategic advice at the onset of bid protests to ensure that clients balance the complex trade-offs between upholding contractor rights and preserving customer relationships. We have the resources to handle even the largest and most complicated protests, which can involve many parties and multiple forums, including classified proceedings. Representative matters include work representing the following:
- GardaWorld Federal Services in the successful defense of a bid protest brought by SOC LLC involving an award of a $58 million Department of State contract to provide security services at the U.S. Embassy in Bangui, Central African Republic. SOC LLC, B-418487.2, .3, Feb. 4, 2021, 2021 CPD ¶ ___.
- Raytheon Company in a protest challenging the Army's award of a contract to Sotera Defense Solutions for an electronic warfare system, identifying multiple errors and contending that the Army should have awarded the contract to Raytheon. The Army responded by taking corrective action, re-evaluating the proposals, and then awarding the contract instead to Raytheon. Sotera promptly protested the new award at the GAO alleging, among other complaints, that the protest advocacy influenced the Army to award the contract to Raytheon. We intervened to help the Army defend the award to Raytheon, which GAO upheld. Sotera then raised similar complaints at the Court of Federal Claims, where we again successfully helped defend Raytheon's contract.
- Ernst & Young LLP in successfully defending a protest against it and teammate CALIBRE Systems, Inc. in connection with a bid protest that challenged a contract award by the Defense Health Agency.
- Algese 2 s.c.a.r.l. in the successful protest at the Court of Federal Claims of a Navy contract award for air terminal and ground handling services in Spain. The Court found the awardee ineligible to perform the contract because of the material misrepresentation and false certification in its proposal, specifically the deliberate failure to disclose a history of fraud and corruption by its parent company and affiliates.
- Dell Federal Systems L.P. in a protest challenging the Army's decision to exclude Dell and numerous other companies from the ITES-3H competitive range. Dell and others filed bid protests, and press reports indicate that GAO denied the protests of 13 companies. The Army, however, responded to Dell's protest by taking corrective action in Dell's favor. The Army eventually awarded an ITES-3H contract to Dell.
- Amazon Web Services (AWS), in one of 2013's highest-profile protests, which involved a $600 million CIA cloud computing services contract. After the agency selected AWS for award, IBM filed several protests at the GAO, which sustained IBM's protests in part. A&P represented AWS in challenging the GAO decision and the associated agency corrective action at the Court of Federal Claims. The court granted judgment for AWS, holding that GAO's protest decision in IBM's favor lacked a rational basis, and restored the contract award to AWS.
- Raytheon Company to defend the Air Force award of a $199 million contract for services to NORAD against a bid protest challenge filed by Lockheed Martin. GAO denied the many protest grounds alleged.
- Motorola Solutions, Inc. in a GAO bid protest challenging the award of a contract to Harris Corporation issued by the U.S. Army Materiel Command for a land mobile radio system for the Detroit Arsenal. GAO sustained the protest, and the contract was awarded instead to Motorola.
- Wisconsin Physicians Service Insurance Corporation (WPS) in parallel GAO protests. We successfully challenged one award to a WPS competitor of a CMS Medicare Administration Contract (MAC) covering Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota (Jurisdiction 6), while simultaneously successfully defending a competitor's protest challenging the award to WPS of another MAC contract covering Michigan and Indiana (Jurisdiction 8). Collectively, the two contracts are valued at over $500 million. In the successful challenge by WPS, the agency agreed to take corrective action following a hearing and a post-hearing conference call during which GAO indicated its intent to sustain WPS's protest. These protests followed an initial successful round of protests for WPS challenging earlier awards involving the same jurisdictions.
- L-3 Services in a bid protest filed by Lockheed Martin for a $362 million contract award. The matter involved sweeping challenges to a substantial task order competition for Enterprise Information Services. We helped convince GAO that the agency had concluded correctly that L-3's proposal in fact represented the best value to the government, thus preserving our client's contract win.
- Systems Application & Technologies Inc. in a precedent-setting case for the government contracting community that preserved the client's contract win. After the Army took corrective action in response to GAO statements, we challenged the corrective action at the Court of Federal Claims. The court found the Army's decision to take corrective action unreasonable. The United States appealed. The Federal Circuit affirmed the Court of Federal Claims decision finding that the court: (1) has jurisdiction over an original contract awardee's challenge to GAO protest corrective action, and (2) found the contractor's claims justiciable.
- Mission Essential Personnel, LLC in successfully defending a $679 million sole-source contract modification award for linguistic services in support of Operation Enduring Freedom - Afghanistan.
- Mission Essential Personnel (MEP) in joining with Army counsel to defend successfully both the Defense Language Interpretation and Translation Enterprise (DLITE) Contract award and a DLITE Afghanistan task order award against several protests across two forums, the Government Accountability Office and the Court of Federal Claims. The Court issued a 62-page published decision in favor of the U.S. and MEP (among others) against a protest by SAIC. See Science Applications International Corporation v. United States, 108 Fed. Cl. 235 (2012). The GAO also denied a protest by Linc Government Services, LLC against a massive task order covering the provision of linguists in Afghanistan issued to MEP under the DLITE contract.
- Dyncorp in successfully defending task orders protest under the multi-billion-dollar Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) procurement.
- Computer Sciences Corporation in a bid protest challenging a $3.5 billion contract awarded to Lockheed Martin to support environmental cleanup activities at the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford, Washington site.
- L-3 Services in a successful GAO bid protest challenging the $270 million Air Force UniComm contract award to General Dynamics (GD), in which a GD subcontractor had an organizational conflict of interest.
- Mission Essential Personnel in successfully defending an $80 million contract awarded by the Defense Intelligence Agency for classification/declassification reviews of documents relating to Guantanamo Bay detainees.
- L-3 Communications in successfully defending against a bid protest filed at the GAO by Exelis Systems Corporation challenging a $78 million task order awarded by the United States Army for logistics support services.
- Digital Management, Inc. (DMI) in successfully defending the award of an Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to provide Net-Centric Integrated Enterprise Information Technology Services (NIEITS) to the Department of Defense, Washington Headquarter Services (WHS). Unsuccessful bidder NetServices & Associates, LLC (NetServices) filed a bid protest before the GAO alleging that the WHS improperly evaluated NetServices' proposal. GAO dismissed NetServices' protest. Meantime, another unsuccessful bidder, Joint Venture of Comint Systems Corporation & EyeIT.com, Inc. (Comint), filed an agency-level protest alleging that post-submission amendments to the Solicitation materially changed the requirements and that the WHS improperly evaluated Comint's proposal. The WHS denied Comint's agency protest. Thereafter, both Comint and NetServices then filed protests in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, but the court granted our motions to dismiss and entered judgment for DMI.
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