On January 23, 2023, in AttainX, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) sustained the protest of an award to an 8(a) joint venture based on, among other reasons, a finding that the agency’s evaluation of the joint venture’s experience was inconsistent with the Small Business Administration (SBA) regulations concerning joint ventures (JVs), citing 13 C.F.R. § 125.8(e) and 13 C.F.R. § 124.513(f).
The protest involved a General Services Administration (GSA) solicitation for IT services to maintain and modernize the USDA Farm Loan Programs systems and applications. The solicitation required offerors to submit a description of their “similar experience” on other contracts. In response, an 8(a) joint venture (MiamiTSPi) submitted two experience examples:
- One experience example had been performed by both the 8(a) managing venturer, MTS, and the small business minority venturer, TSPi, but as a different 8(a) certified joint venture, MTSPi LLC.
- The second experience example had been performed by only TSPi, the non-8(a) small business minority venturer.
GSA evaluated MiamiTSPi as Acceptable under the “similar experience” factor and ultimately made award to MiamiTSPi. Disappointed offeror AttainX protested, arguing, among other things, that even though GSA had only rated MiamiTSPi as Acceptable under “similar experience” as opposed to a higher rating, GSA unreasonably neglected to evaluate the risk associated with the fact that the experience examples submitted by MiamiTSPi were not performed by the joint venture proposed as the prime contractor nor performed individually by the “managing member” of the joint venture.
Continue Reading When it Comes to Joint Venture Experience, Perfection May Be Hard to Attain(X)