A team of Pillsbury Government Contracts & Disputes attorneys led by partner John Jensen in Northern Virginia prevailed in a successful Government Accountability Office bid protest by Apprio, Inc., that overturned a Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) award of an approximately $100 million contract for training services to be performed at the Center for Disaster Preparedness (CDP) to Leidos, Inc.

In this case, Apprio, Inc., GAO B-420627, the protest was sustained on multiple grounds: 1) Cost Realism – The Pillsbury team demonstrated a disparity between Leidos’ technical proposal, which proposed an all-incumbent workforce, and its cost proposal, which was largely based on minimum wages established by the Service Contract Act. The agency also unreasonably evaluated the awardee’s proposed approach toward rate escalation and employed a standard deviation methodology in an unreasonable manner. 2) Evaluation Technical Proposal – The team additionally proved that the agency assessed an unreasonable weakness under the corporate experience factor and that the agency’s response to the protest was not supported by the contemporaneous record.

Click here to read more about the GAO decision.

In addition to Jensen, Apprio is represented by Meghan Doherty, Robert Starling, and Ariella Cassell in Northern Virginia.