GAO Denies Protests Where Offerer’s Proposal Addressed Pending Corporate Deals

Our colleague John Jensen recently published his Alert titled Proposals Should Carefully Address Pending Corporate Deals Lockheed Martin’s recent success in overcoming GAO protests shows that fully explaining a transaction in the works can be a key proposal element. In the Alert, John discusses the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) recently announced denial of three protests filed by disappointed offerors Enterprise Services LLC, Accenture Federal Services LLC and CSRA LLC challenging the Social Security Administration’s award of an IT contract to Lockheed Martin Corp.

Key takeaways are:

• The GAO denied three protests of a high-profile contract award that were premised on an anticipated spin-off of the offeror’s government IT business segment because the offeror explained the transaction adequately in its proposal.
• The decision demonstrates that an offeror that thoughtfully plans for the impact of a pending corporate transaction on prospective contract performance—and discloses that plan—stands a good chance of surviving a protest by a competitor.