Legal Fees associated with Velos' protest of contract award N08PC10010 to Meditat

National Cancer Institute, Frederick MD

Investigators

Abstract

Center for Biomedical Informatics &Information Technology (CBIIT) is providing funds to the Acquisition Services Directorate (AQD) to pay for the legal fees associated with an offeror[unreadable]s protest of a contract award (Reference RFP 20201). Department of Interior[unreadable]s National Business Center (NBC), Acquisition Services Directorate (AQD), beginning in 2007, conducted an acquisition on behalf of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) under an interagency agreement between NCI and NBC. That acquisition, which ended up being Request for Proposals (RFP) No. 1406-04-08-RP-20201, was issued in early fiscal year 2008 and resulted in AQD[unreadable]s receipt of a number of proposals for this multi-million dollar cancer clinical trial software requirement. AQD narrowed the competition down to a [unreadable]competitive range[unreadable] of four offerors, two of which were twice, or more, as expensive as the two lower-priced offerors. After protracted negotiations with the apparent successful offeror, Velos, which was the slightly less expensive offeror of the two lowest-priced, AQD decided to award to Medidata. In early September 2008, Velos protested to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on the basis that its software license was compliant with the Government[unreadable]s terms and it, not Medidata, should have received the contract award. It was over this exact issue that negotiations broke down between AQD and Velos. The other two much higher-priced offerors also protested (three protests in all, in GAO protests B-400500 and B-400500.2-7). After extensive back-and-forth filings over weeks and months involving three law firms, the matter culminated in a two-day hearing on November 5 and 6, 2008, involving only Velos[unreadable] issues. The GAO ruled, in November 2008, in favor of Velos on the license issue, but denied the protests of the other two protesters. In finding that Velos[unreadable] protest had merit, GAO awarded Velos it[unreadable]s protest costs.