System Studies & Simulation, Inc. v. United States, No. 21-1469 (Fed. Cir. 2021)
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The Army requested bids for helicopter flight training and awarded the contract to L3. In a bid-protest action filed by disappointed bidder S3, the Claims Court set aside the award. After reevaluation of the bids, the Army awarded the contract to CAE. S3 filed another bid protest.
The Claims Court rejected most of S3’s arguments but agreed that the assignment by the Army’s source selection authority (SSA) of a certain “strength” to CAE was irrational because that strength, which purported to provide a “significant cost savings benefit,” would result in only small and unpredictable savings, if any. Nevertheless, the Claims Court upheld the award, finding no prejudice to S3 from the identified error. The Claims Court observed that the erroneously found strength had been treated as falling within a non-price-factor category for which CAE’s proposal had been “clearly superior,” an assessment that would not be altered by the loss of a strength for which the only possible benefit could be monetary; when explicitly comparing the added benefits of the CAE proposal with its higher price in the best-value tradeoff analysis, the SSA had not made any adjustment to CAE’s price based on a cost-saving from the strength.
The Federal Circuit affirmed, rejecting an argument that there is a presumption of prejudice whenever the Claims Court determines that the agency acted irrationally in making an award decision and finding no clear error in the determination that there was no prejudice.
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