A gentle reminder from DPAP about the Defense Base Act clause in DoD Overseas Contracts.

A memo from the Air Force's General Counsel about "Deploying With Contractors."

Can a contracting officer who does not understand the requirement make the necessary cost/technical tradeoff. No according to the GAO in e-LYNXX Corporation. "In performing the price/technical tradeoff analysis, the contracting officer adopted the technical evaluation judgments of the agency’s evaluators. Tr. at 410. That is, although the contracting officer attended all of the oral presentations, see Tr. at 343, he did not independently assess the vendors’ systems and, in fact, testified that he did not have the technical expertise to perform such an assessment. Tr. at 410. The contracting officer also testified that he had no conversations with any of the evaluators or anyone else regarding the technical evaluation judgments, but relied upon the evaluators’ typed evaluation summaries (Agency Report, Tabs 2, 3, 4, and 5) and consensus evaluation report (Agency Report, Tab 6). Tr. at 361-62."......."Here, we find that the contracting officer failed to give any meaningful consideration to e-LYNXX’s substantially lower quotation price, given his inability to explain why Noosh’s superiority was worth the more than 65 percent higher price. More specifically, we question whether the contracting officer had a sufficient basis to perform a rational price/technical tradeoff where he testified that the open posting requirement was a key consideration in his analysis but that he did not understand the requirement or obtain any advice concerning it from anyone that did. We fail to see how the contracting officer can assign value for something he admittedly does not understand and for which he did not seek any advice, and we sustain e-LYNXX’s protest on this basis."


Another problem here was the use or oral presentations for which no contemporaneous recording was made. "As explained below, we have been unable to determine from this record what e‑Lynxx offered at its oral presentation, despite conducting a hearing to receive testimony from three of the agency’s four evaluators, the contracting officer, and the protester’s presenter. The record is replete with conflicting evidence, statements and testimony concerning what e-LYNXX presented orally to the GPO evaluators regarding the open posting requirement."