The General Services Administration (GSA) recently announced that, “[d]ue to corrective action being taken in response to a U.S. Court of Federal Claims protest, the government has rescinded all contract awards made in response to solicitation no. QTA0016GBA0002,” which is for the Alliant 2 Small Business Governmentwide Acquisition Contract.

What happened?

The subject solicitation, which was originally issued in June 2016 and contained a total ceiling of $15 billion, sought proposals for the Alliant 2 Small Business Governmentwide Acquisition Contract, a multiple-award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantify contract, for information technology services.

In February 2018, the GSA awarded contracts to 81 different small businesses under the solicitation.

Thereafter, more than 15 disappointed offerors filed bid protests with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), challenging various aspects of the GSA’s evaluation and awards (B-415789, et al.).

During the pendency of the GAO protests, however, one of the disappointed offerors filed a separate bid protest at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (COFC). This COFC protest divested the GAO of jurisdiction over the pending protests, and the GAO thus dismissed the pending protests in May 2018.

One of the original GAO protesters, Citizant, Inc. (Citizant), then filed its own protest with the COFC in June 2018, alleging a series of errors associated with the evaluation of more than 20 awardees. Approximately nine months later, in March 2019, the COFC found in favor of Citizant, agreeing that the contracting officer acted arbitrarily by crediting certain offerors with points for proposing an adequate Cost Accounting System (CAS) and by failing to rationally evaluate certain offerors’ proposed pricing.

As a result, the COFC enjoined “the GSA from proceeding with the current awardee list” and directed “the GSA to reevaluate the proposals in a manner that redresses the errors” discussed in the COFC’s decision.

In response to the Citizant COFC decision, the GSA announced on March 26, 2019, that it “has rescinded all contract awards made” under the Alliant 2 Small Business solicitation, “returning to a pre-award status.”

What does this mean for Alliant 2 Small Business offerors?

According to the GSA’s March 26, 2019, announcement, which was posted on www.fbo.gov, “[p]roposal evaluation will continue and a new source selection decision is expected at a point to be determined.”

The GSA’s announcement further states that “[s]olicitation number QTA0016GBA0002 on www.fbo.gov remains the official location for solicitation information – please continue to monitor it for updates.”

Finally, the announcement states that “GSA understands that you might have questions and those can be sent to a2sb@gsa.gov, which might be addressed in a question and response release to all parties on FBO.”