Breaking Tanker News: Here is the full redacted GAO tanker decision. We will comment later after we have time to read it.Also, the Air and Land Forces Subcommittee of the HASC will receive a brief from the GAO on their tanker decision tomorrow. According to the HASC memo we received, only Congressional Members and committee staff will be allowed to attend, but we will inform our readers if any new releasable issues are discussed.
Of note though is that Ms. Sue Payton, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition and tanker source selection official, had planned to attend but the Secretary of Defense has directed she postpone her brief to the subcommittee until the Department's review of the GAO decision is complete.
Stumble It!
4 comments:
What I find most interesting is the finding by the GAO on page 54 that concludes that NG's failing to commit to a 2 year time frame for depot level maintenance as the most fatal flaw of all. The GAO notes: "It is a fundamental principle in a negotiated procurement that a proposal that fails to conform to a material solicitation requirement is technically unacceptable and cannot form the basis for award." A paragraph later it goes on to say: "In sum, the Air Force improperly accepted Northrop Grumman’s proposal, where that proposal clearly took exception to a material solicitation requirement.
My read is that this could be construed as Northrop Grumman's proposal is/was "Non-Responsive". In other words, it should have been disqualified. Can any contract lawyers "out there" comment on this?
Even worse is the total mess regarding extra credit for extra fuel offloading game that was used which was in direct conflict with the RFP and other documents. It is a basic tenet of Contract law that ambiguities are held against the drafter. yet both Northrup and the airforce (pages 34-37 ) claimed that the extra credit was UNLIMITED. That the GAO in its report had to resort to some very basic contract and legal explanations is outrageous. At the same time- it is hard to believe that honest and dedicated lower level personnel would have come up with such a specious argument in support of the award. IMHO- it appears more typical of high level apathy-interference or late night cooking of the books by other than the grunts involved
That always bothered me. How could somethign so basic be so unclear. Sue Payton said they made it clear there was extra credit. But what really matters is what is in black and white.
The AF violated the most basic premise of the Acquisition process: You must evaluate the proposals in light of what was in the RFP. They failed to do this and set themselves up for the position they are in now. The GAO correctly analyzed the errors in the award process.
~ A Government ACQ guy...
Post a Comment