The Only Job That Doesn't Qualify Is This One
The Navy set a $6.5 million floor on qualifying experience for a custodial recompete whose own contract averages $5.5 million a year. Two firms protested the number, one got it lowered, and GAO has now ruled the agency never had to check whether anybody could clear it.
Two companies have protested this solicitation since January, and neither of them said a word about the work.
Both went after one number inside the corporate experience factor.
GAO published the second decision this morning. The contract is janitorial services at the Washington Navy Yard and seven other Navy locations, about $5.5 million a year, which puts it several floors below anything that reaches a pipeline review.
The holding does not stay down there.
"How far above the job can an agency set the experience bar before the bar is the award decision?"
The number
RFP N40080-25-R-2233 went out on January 27 to 8(a) participants under FAR parts 12 and 15, for custodial services at Naval installations across DC, Maryland and Virginia. Firm-fixed-price IDIQ, one base year, four one-year options, and a six-month option on the tail. Award goes to the lowest-priced technically acceptable proposal.
Corporate experience is one of the acceptability gates. Offerors submit three janitorial projects from the last five years, and at least two have to be recent, relevant, and show custodial work at different facility types in different locations simultaneously.
To count as similar in size, a submitted project had to be valued at $8 million or more per year.
The contract being competed averages $5,506,000 per year (chart below).
So the work was not a qualifying reference for the work. A firm cleaning those buildings today could not put that contract into its own proposal and have it count toward the factor.
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