Procurement 5860 Future Solutions Case Study

Fact

Future Solutions Inc., protested the award by the Environmental Protection Agency of a purchase agreement for office supplies to Corporate Express. FSI argues that the requirements should be set aside for a small business and that it was not given an the opportunity to compete for the agreement. Also, FSI feels the agency’s requirements of the BPA is not the appropriate bundling.

The quote was seeking to award a blanket purchase for the acquiring of office supplies. The products would be for about 70 EPA facilities, throughout the United States. The base term of the agreement was 1 year, with four 1 year options, with a maximum of 15 months of incentive.

In 2003, the EPA chose to evaluate quotes from four large business FSS 75 IIA type contractors. The agency issued a “source sought” notice seeking information on the capability if small FSS 75 II contractors for consideration for the BPA. The capability statements were limited to 5 pages and were to address the BPA’s statement of work and 10 other specific capabilities. The EPA received capability statements from nine small business FSS contractors, including FSI. Based on her review the contracting officer determined that none of the small businesses respondents would be able to perform the BPA’s requirements. The Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization requested that the contracting officers participate in a teleconference with two of the small business respondents (not including FSI), so that the contracting officer could obtain additional information that might demonstrate that these small business FSS vendors could meet the requirements. After the teleconference, the contracting officer again concluded that no business FSS contractors could meet the RFQ requirements. The contracting officer then reevaluated the quotations from the four large business FSS contractors and awarded the BPA to Corporate Express, Inc. on October 23.

Issue

The issue in this is case surrounds procurement not...