Army Procurement

In response to a congressional request, GAO reviewed a complaint from a firm concerning alleged unfair procurement practices at Fort Lee, Virginia, to determine whether the: (1) contracting personnel acted properly in not selecting for cost comparison the bid with the lowest proposed cost; and (2) Army consistently applied Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requirements and federal procurement regulations in its selection process.

GAO found that the Army: (1) evenly applied the same criteria to all bids; and (2) properly did not select the complainant's bid for cost comparison with the government's in-house estimate, since the bid was unrealistically low and it did not have high management and technical ratings. GAO also found that: (1) although the Army properly modified the solicitation to correct ambiguous instructions and allowed bidders to correct their bids, the complainant's bid needed no corrections; and (2) the Army's bid evaluation was flawed, since it gave too much weight to cost, did not conform to the original evaluation criteria and, under a cost-reimbursement contract, could have resulted in possible cost overruns. In addition, GAO found that the Army took corrective action to reevaluate the bids using a selection plan that fully conformed with the solicitation criteria.