Your CPARS Record Decides Who Gets the RFQ

Last November a company called AtechGov learned about an Agriculture Department IT support solicitation four days before quotes were due. It held a schedule contract and had not been invited.

So it asked USDA for a copy of the RFQ, and asked for more time. The agency sent the RFQ and refused the extension.

GAO denied the protest on November 17, holding that four invited vendors cleared the bar even though market research had turned up five capable ones (B-423738).

Read that sequence again, because the interesting part is the part nobody argued about. The agency sent the document.

Eight months later GSA was asked the same question twice in two days, said no both times, and won.

Sixteen of Forty-One

On February 2 GSA's Public Buildings Service posted an RFI to eBuy to size the market for complete facilities maintenance at federal buildings in Omaha and Lincoln. One new requirement folded up out of three existing contracts: facilities engineering, O&M, janitorial, grounds, snow removal, elevators.

41 interested sources answered. 33 of them were small businesses.

That was more market than the office wanted to evaluate.

Citing a "compelling need to maximize efficiency and resources," it decided to solicit "the top 50% (16) vendors ... to ensure that there was enough competition (at least 3 vendors), while also balancing the Government's limited resources (time and employees available)."

Three screens built that list: small business status, MAS contracts carrying SINs 561210FAC, ANCRA and OLM, and a CPARS cutoff.

The CPARS screen is the one worth your attention. The office counted every category rating on every assessment in the system with a start date of January 1, 2021 or later, six categories per assessment, and drew the line at 1%. A vendor made the list only if no more than one percent of its category ratings fell below satisfactory. Ten assessments is sixty ratings, so three marginals puts you at 5%, and 5% is out.

16 vendors received RFQ 47PG5426Q0001 on April 6. The other 25 never saw it (chart below).

Wilson 5 Service Company, a small business out of Kittery, Maine, was in the 25. On April 15 it emailed the contract specialist for a copy. The agency answered the same day and did not send it. On April 16 it asked again, and GSA replied that it was "no longer required to provide the RFQ to any schedule contractor that requests a copy of it" because that provision "had been removed from the FAR."

Wilson 5 protested on April 22, before quotes were due. GAO denied it 86 days later, on July 17, and the decision reached the public docket on August 13.