The Government Accountability Office this week denied a bid protest challenging the Department of Energy’s award to Centerra of a new security contract at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
In a redacted version of the decision posted online Thursday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) dismissed Securitas-led SRS Critical Infrastructure Security’s (SCIS) argument that DOE had unreasonably failed to explain why the agency awarded the billion-dollar business to SCIS two years ago only to reevaluate the award and flip it back to incumbent Centerra.
SCIS, Herndon, Va., said DOE owed the company an explanation about why the second source selection authority and source evaluation board the agency assembled the vet three offers for the contract came to a different conclusion than the first.
GAO said there was nothing unreasonable about different people making different decisions.
“[W]e have recognized that it is not unusual for different evaluators, or groups of evaluators, to reach different conclusions and assign different scores or ratings when evaluating proposals, as both objective and subjective judgments are involved,” GAO wrote in its redacted decision.
The decision also shows the bid price by SRS Critical Infrastructure Security was slightly higher, and had lower DOE ratings, than the Centerra group.
SRS Critical Infrastructure Security filed its bid protest in late January. The company won the business in 2021 and the award even survived a protest from a third bidder, SOC, a Day & Zimmermann company. However, because of Centerra’s protest, which the company lodged for reasons neither it nor GAO has explained in detail, DOE changed its mind.
While both SCIS’ and Centerra’s proposals came in slightly above $1 billion, the SRS Critical Infrastructure bid came in about $6 million over the Cenerra bid. In addition, Centerra’s proposal was rated higher on technical approach, key personnel and past performance.
In addition, SRS Critical Infrastructure Security alleged defects in Centerra’s performance guarantee, which was provided by Constellis, Herndon, Va. SCIS said Constellis was not actually Centerra’s parent company. GAO, however, pointed out that it was.
“SCIS [based] this argument entirely on one organizational chart included in the cost/price volume of Centerra’s proposal, which shows another entity — Centerra-TDI Group Holdings, LLC — immediately above Centerra Group, LLC and immediately below Constellis, LLC,” GAO wrote.
DOE announced the new contract for incumbent Centerra in January. The pact is potentially worth over $1 billion over a decade. Centerra has held the security business, to protect people, facilities, secrets and special nuclear material, since October 2009.
