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The following is an installment in Crowell & Moring’s Bid Protest Sustain of the Month Series.  In this series, Crowell’s Government Contracts Practice will keep you up to date with a summary of the most notable bid protest sustain decision each month.  Below, Crowell Consultant Cherie Owen discusses Spatial Front, Inc., B-422058.4, B-422058.5, Dec. 6, 2024, 2024 CPD ¶ 30, in which GAO sustained a protest where the agency awarded a contract under the Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) but the required services were outside the scope of the awardee’s FSS contract.

In Spatial Front, USDA sought a contractor to provide IT-related services in support of USDA’s conservation programs that help private landowners improve the health of farming and ranching lands.  However, the agency’s efforts have been beset by numerous protests—as GAO noted, the agency began this procurement effort nearly three years ago.  This was the fifth time Spatial Front (the incumbent contractor) had protested the agency’s procurement of these services.  The four prior protests had resulted in either voluntary agency corrective action or a sustained protest decision.

Unfortunately, the fifth time was not a charm for USDA: as with its multiple previous attempts, the Agency again failed to adequately analyze whether the awardee’s FSS contract contained labor categories needed to perform the work here.  By way of background, when an agency conducts a procurement under the FSS, all goods or services quoted must be on the contractor’s schedule contract as a precondition to it receiving the order.  For service contracts, agencies must consider whether the functional descriptions of the contractor’s quoted FSS labor categories (“LCATs”) include the services that are proposed by the vendor and required by the solicitation.  If there is insufficient alignment—i.e., if a quoted LCAT’s functional description does not encompass the services for which the contractor offers that position—then the LCAT does not meet the requirements of the solicitation and cannot serve as the basis for issuing an order to the contractor.  That was the case here. 

GAO found that, while USDA had documented a conclusion that the awardee’s FSS contract contained labor categories aligning to the required work, that conclusion was not reasonable.  Specifically, the contract required the provision of specialized geospatial IT skillsets.  The awardee quoted labor categories from its “management and financial consulting” SIN.  (A Special Item Number (“SIN”) is a group of generically similar (but not identical) supplies or services that are intended to serve the same general purpose or function.)  Analyzing the descriptions of the awardee’s quoted labor categories, GAO found that they encompassed “high-level subject matter expertise” not for the provision of IT services, but as a person who “[d]esigns and prepares technical reports, studies, and related documentation, makes charts and graphs to record results, prepares and delivers presentations, training, and briefings.”  According to GAO, such work “cannot reasonably be interpreted as encompassing the provision of the geospatially-specialized IT skillsets required under the solicitation here.”  Because the awardee’s quoted FSS labor categories could not reasonably be interpreted to include the type of work required by the solicitation, GAO concluded that the required services were outside the scope of the awardee’s FSS contract, and the award was improper.

The Spatial Front demonstrates not only the importance of persistence, but also the importance of ensuring that quoted LCATS rationally align with the services required under a contract.  Contractors who do not have the required services under their current FSS contract may want to analyze whether subcontracting with a partner that does have the required LCATs presents a viable approach.