Past performance evaluations play an important role in determining the strength and viability of competing offerors’ proposals. It is generally within the procuring agency’s discretion to determine the scope of the past performance history to be considered during evaluation, provided all proposals are evaluated on the same basis and the evaluation is consistent with the terms of the solicitation. While procuring agencies are typically permitted to limit their evaluations to only consider past performance information submitted in response to the solicitation, under certain limited circumstances, outside information not submitted with the offerors’ proposals must also be considered. Under such circumstances, the procuring agency is required to consider outside information as part of its past performance evaluation when the information is determined to be “too close at hand” to require competing offerors to bear the inequities that would arise from the agency’s failure to obtain and consider the information. Notably, the “too close at hand” principle is narrowly interpreted and is only applied to information related to the offerors’ past performance.

In B-275554, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) sustained a bid protest challenging the procuring agency’s past performance evaluation by applying the “too close at hand” principle. In that procurement, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) intended to acquire a replacement telephone system for the VA Medical Center in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. In evaluating the protester’s past performance, the contracting officer (CO), as the source selection authority, identified two directly relevant past performance references but only considered one reference, as an agency official did not complete a required form with respect to the protester’s other past performance reference. Notably, the contract whose reference was not considered involved the same agency, the same CO, and virtually the same services as the solicitation at hand. Furthermore, the CO conducting the procurement not only had the first-hand knowledge of the prior contract but also described the protester’s performance as “exemplary” in a letter provided to the Small Business Administration (SBA) on an unrelated matter. In applying the “too close at hand” principle, the GAO sustained the protest and concluded that it was unreasonable for the CO not to consider the protester’s past performance information on the earlier contract under these circumstances.

Procuring agencies often take corrective actions in response to bid protests, both following bid protest decisions and voluntarily before decisions are rendered on the merits of the protest. The scope of corrective actions is typically within the discretion of the procuring agency, provided the action is appropriate to remedy a flaw that the agency believes exists in its procurement process. Protesters may nevertheless challenge the scope of corrective actions as overly broad or too narrow, with the former challenge typically more difficult to sustain. When filing such protests at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), protesters should file within ten days of the announcement of the corrective action, if revised proposals are not required. Otherwise, protesters must file their protests before the deadline for submitting the revised proposals. In such protests, the GAO will generally not object to a particular corrective action taken by a procuring agency, provided the action reasonably relates to and remedies the concern that prompted it.

In B-423269.2, a protest decision issued on April 23, 2025, the GAO denied a bid protest challenging the scope of the procuring agency’s corrective action as overly broad. The underlying procurement involved a request for proposal (RFP) issued by the United States Marine Corps (USMC) for the acquisition of support services for its Program Manager Expeditionary Radars portfolio. The RFP contemplated a best-value tradeoff evaluation and was issued under Navy’s SeaPort indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract. The USMC received two timely proposals in response to the RFP, which were subsequently evaluated. The agency assigned the protester’s technical proposal an overall rating of “acceptable” with a total evaluated price of approximately $35.5 million. Meanwhile, the awardee’s proposal received a technical rating of “outstanding” with an evaluated total price of approximately $54 million and was determined to represent the best value to the government. In its initial protest, the protester challenged the USMC’s evaluation of its technical proposal and argued that the agency had failed to adequately explain why the awardee’s proposal justified a 52% price premium.

The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) requires contracting officers (COs) to purchase supplies and services from responsible sources at fair and reasonable prices. In determining price reasonableness, the procuring agency’s primary concern is typically whether the offeror’s quoted prices are too high. Generally, adequate competition between proposals received in response to the solicitation establishes the reasonableness of pricing. However, depending on the procurement, the government may employ various other price analysis techniques to establish price reasonableness. Such techniques may include comparing proposed prices to historical prices paid, competitive published price lists, an independent government cost estimate (IGCE), or prices obtained through market research for the same or similar items or services. Unsuccessful offerors may challenge the procuring agency’s price reasonableness evaluation techniques in a post-award protest. In such protests, the manner and depth of the government’s price reasonableness evaluation is typically within the sound exercise of the agency’s discretion. However, while it is the agency’s prerogative to select an appropriate method for evaluating price reasonableness, the chosen method must provide a reasonable basis for assessing the different proposed pricing under the competing proposals.