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.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2015 requires procuring agencies to verify that all potential awardees of contracts performed in Africa and the Middle East are eligible for base access. Procuring agencies determine a contractor’s base access eligibility by checking the Joint Contingency Contracting System (JCCS) vendor vetting database. The JCCS allows contractors to view available solicitations for local work in these regions and submit proposals in response. In such solicitations, an offeror’s registration in JCCS and its ability to access the relevant bases, as reflected in the JCCS, are considered definitive responsibility criteria. Such criteria are objective RFP standards, which are included to evaluate offerors’ ability to perform the contract successfully. If an offeror fails to meet these specifically included criteria, it is deemed non-responsible and cannot be awarded the contract. Unsuccessful offerors facing such adverse determinations may file a bid protest challenging their exclusion. However, to sustain such protests, the protestors must demonstrate that the base access ineligibility decision underlying the adverse responsibility determination was made in bad faith or due to erroneous decision-making by the government under its procurement authority. Alternatively, the protestor may show a lack of reasonable basis for the determination.

It is in the government’s best interests that professional employees on federal contracts be fairly compensated. However, recompetition of service contracts often results in lower compensation for professional employees, which can harm the quality of professional services required for contract performance. Thus, certain solicitations for service contracts may contain the provision at Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 52.222-46, which requires procuring agencies to conduct a two-prong evaluation of professional employee compensation plans. The first prong is essentially a price realism evaluation of the offeror’s proposed compensation to determine whether it understands the contract requirements and has proposed a compensation plan appropriate for those requirements. The second prong requires the procuring agency to determine whether a proposal contemplates compensation levels lower than those of predecessor contractors by comparing proposed compensation rates to incumbent rates. Thus, in addition to a price realism analysis, FAR 52.222-46 requires procuring agencies to compare the compensation of the incumbent professional staff to the proposed professional compensation. If the procuring agency fails to conduct such a comparison, the evaluation of professional employee compensation plans may be protested as unreasonable.