$249 Million Rides on a Package You Can't Revise

If you bid architect-engineer work, you have sat through the telephone interview. Same board, same questions, one firm at a time.

You probably file it mentally under discussions. The Army Corps of Engineers just won a protest on the ground that it is nothing of the sort.

GAO published Kenall-Geo Engineering JV LLC on October 27, a denial decided October 20 out of the Corps' Caribbean District. The protester, a small business out of San Juan, had been slated, interviewed, ranked last of six, and left off a vehicle carrying $249 million.

Its strongest argument was that the board never asked it about the thing that sank it.

"How do you fix a package nobody is required to tell you is broken?"

Under the Brooks Act you don't, and GAO spent eleven pages on why the rule is built that way.

What the Corps Is Actually Buying

The vehicle is the Caribbean District's A-E IDIQ MATOC, solicitation W51DQV25RA012, synopsized to SAM on August 29, 2025 with the full SF 330 request sitting in PIEE from the 5th of that month. NAICS 541330, PSC C219, performance out of San Juan.

Eight awards targeted across two pools: five unrestricted and three small business at the $25.5 million receipts standard. All eight share a single $249 million capacity over a one-year base and four one-year options.

So the three small business seats are seats at a shared table, and it is the only table the district is setting for five years.

Thirteen small firms filed SF 330s against the September 29, 2025 deadline.

A pre-selection board called eight of them highly qualified. A selection board cut that to six, the most highly qualified.

Those six went into telephone interviews, and three came out ranked for price negotiations (chart below).

Kenall-Geo made the eight and made the six. It finished sixth of six, twice: an agency-level protest from a firm outside this case forced corrective action, the Corps reevaluated everybody, and the ranking came back identical.

Nothing has been awarded yet. No IDIQ against that solicitation shows up in FPDS under the district's office code, and SAM still carries exactly one notice on the number.