Incumbents Should Not Take Their Advantages for Granted

The protester claimed the agency should have rated its past performance with high confidence because the protester had performed well as the incumbent. GAO said incumbency was not the end-all-be-all for past performance.

Despite the advantages of an incumbent, they are not a shoo-in for the follow-on. Often the follow-on contract has new requirements that the incumbent doesn’t adequately address. Agencies often use a follow-on award to reframe the approach or update the requirements. In this case, the incumbent did not adequately address the new requirements in their past performance and assumed the rating on the incumbent contract would be given greater consideration.

In making its decision to reject the protest, GAO states, “An agency’s evaluation of past performance is, by its nature, subjective, and that evaluation, including the agency’s assessments about relevance, scope, and significance, are matters of discretion that we will not disturb absent a clear demonstration the assessments are unreasonable or inconsistent with the solicitation criteria.”

In a highly competitive market, incumbents should not take anything for granted, especially in addressing new requirements in the follow-on work.

Read the summary and details here.