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.

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.