“GAO recently sustained a protest to the evaluation of an awardee’s management approach based on a material misrepresentation in its proposed key personnel experience (that the protester found on Linkedin, no less). And GAO found the misrepresentation was material because the agency relied upon it, and it significantly impacted the agency’s evaluation. Let’s take a closer look.
Insight Tech. Sols., Inc., B-420133.2 (Dec. 20, 2021) involves a task order issued by the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seeking information technology support services for the agency’s student and exchange visitor program. The agency issued the solicitation under the National Institutes of Health’s CIO-SP3 small business GWAC…”
“In its management approach factor evaluation, the agency found that the awardee’s proposed key personnel had ‘experience that exceed[s] the minimum experience requirements identified by the PWS’ and said that this added value and increased the likelihood of the awardee’s success. The agency’s report specifically noted the project operations manager’s listed qualifications, concluding that the ‘added experience causes the Government to have high confidence that [the awardee] can successfully perform the proposed requirements with enhanced expertise.’ The agency provided a similar evaluation conclusion for the protester’s proposed key personnel experience…”
“The protester filed protest at GAO, arguing that the evaluation and award were improper because the awardee had misrepresented its proposed project operations manager’s relevant experience, specifically, that he or she had nine years of relevant management experience. In fact, according to the protester, the proposed project operations manager not only lacked the purported nine years of experience, he or she actually failed to meet the solicitation’s five-year minimum experience requirement. Relying on its debriefing, the protester argued that the agency’s evaluation of the awardee’s technical acceptability and benefits of the proposed project operations manager’s experience were largely based on that misrepresentation. Thus, the protester concluded that the evaluation was flawed and failed to provide a reasonable basis for the award.
In reaching its decision on the protest, GAO stated its standards for material misrepresentations in proposals as follows:
A material misrepresentation in a proposal can provide a basis for disqualifying a proposal and canceling a contract award based upon the proposal. A misrepresentation is material where the agency relied upon it and it likely had a significant impact upon the evaluation…” Read the full article here.
Source: Can’t Pad Key Personnel Résumé, Says GAO – By Nicole Pottroff, February 14, 2022. SmallGovCon.
