Happy New Year to ALL!

If you don't have to do it, but you do it anyways, you had better do it right. In KMR, LLC, B-202860, GAO sustained a protest involving an RFQ that was to result in award to a small business that was listed as a vendor on the Federal Supply Schedule.

"As noted above, the evaluation was conducted under the FSS program. Under this program, an agency is not required to conduct a competition before using its business judgment in determining whether ordering supplies or services from an FSS vendor represents the best value and meets the agency's needs at the lowest overall cost. FAR 8.404; OSI Collection Servs., Inc., B-286597, B-286597.2, Jan. 17, 2001, 2001 CPD ¶18 at 6. However, where an agency decides to conduct a formal competition for award of a task order contract, as is the case here, we will review the agency's actions to ensure that the evaluation was fair and reasonable and consistent with the solicitation. COMARK Fed. Sys., B-278343, B-278343.2, Jan. 20, 1998, 98-1 CPD ¶ 34 at 4-5."

The problem here was that although the awardees' performance scores were higher than the protestors', the agency failed to properly consider the relevance of that past performance to the requirement.