Protests Involving Failure to Meet Material Solicitation Requirements

Proposals that fail to satisfy the material terms of a solicitation for a negotiated procurement are considered unacceptable and may not form the basis of an award. It is well-established that it is the offeror’s responsibility to submit an adequately written proposal in accordance with the solicitation’s terms that contains all the required information. Despite this obligation, offerors may inadvertently omit necessary information from their proposals. Similarly, proposals may inadequately address or otherwise fail to convey information required by the solicitation. In such cases, the offeror risks adverse evaluation by the procuring agency or elimination from the competition altogether. Protests challenging the agency’s adverse decisions in such cases can have a low success rate because the Government Accountability Office (GAO) does not reevaluate proposals or substitute its judgment for that of the agency but only ensures the reasonableness of the evaluation against the stated evaluation criteria and applicable procurement laws and regulations. Contractors should also be mindful that their disagreement with the agency’s judgment alone is insufficient to establish the unreasonableness of the evaluation. Furthermore, while the agency may elect to seek clarifications, when a solicitation contemplates award without discussions, providing an opportunity for offerors to resolve even minor or clerical errors in their proposals is firmly within the agency’s discretion, as there is no automatic right to clarifications.

In B-423306.17, a decision issued on May 21, 2026, the GAO denied a protest finding that the agency reasonably eliminated the protester’s proposal from competition because it omitted required information. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) issued the solicitation for the sixth generation of its solutions for enterprise wide procurement (SEWP VI) contract vehicle pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 15. The solicitation contemplated awards to all qualifying offerors, without negotiations, for a 10-year ordering period. Of the three categories of contracts contemplated under the solicitation, this protest concerned Category B, enterprise-wide IT communication and audio-visual service solutions. Among other requirements of phase one the three-phased procurement, offerors had to demonstrate that they possessed mandatory experience by submitting information regarding four relevant experience projects. As relevant here, each experience project had to have total value of at least $30 million. The solicitation warned offerors that phase one would be evaluated on a pass/fail basis and that proposals that did not meet all the requirements of the solicitation would be eliminated from the competition. In evaluating the relevant portion of the protester’s proposal, NASA found that one of the four experience projects did not state a project value as required by the solicitation. The agency also noted that the proposal did not include a contract or order number, which meant that evaluators could not verify whether the project met the $30 million minimum value requirement. Consequently, the protester’s proposal was eliminated from the competition. 

In the protest that followed, the protester argued that it was unreasonable for the agency to eliminate it from the competition because its omission was an obvious clerical error and that it should have been apparent from the project description that the protester was substantially compensated. The protester also maintained that the evaluators should have searched the state agency website for the project value and that NASA had abused its discretion by failing to seek clarifications from the protester. The GAO disagreed, noting that rather than providing a dollar value for the pertinent project, the protester merely listed the project value as “N/A – State & Local Contract.” Additionally, the project value could not be determined even from reviewing the narrative portion of the project description or the entirety of past performance volume. Since the project value was not included in the proposal, the agency could not verify whether the project satisfied the solicitation’s $30 million minimum value requirement. Given that it was the protester’s burden to submit an adequately written proposal, the omission of the project value was sufficient basis for the agency to reasonably eliminate the protester’s proposal from competition for failing to meet a material requirement. The protester’s argument that NASA should have searched the state agency website for the project value was deemed to be without any merit. NASA was also not required to seek clarifications because the solicitation contemplated awards without discussions and the decision to seek clarifications was firmly within the agency’s discretion. 

Similarly, in B-423306.18, a decision issued on May 12, 2026, the GAO denied the protest after finding that the agency had reasonably eliminated the protester for inadequately addressing or failing to convey the information required by the solicitation. The protest involved the same relevant experience project requirement of the NASA SEWP VI contract vehicle procurement. For one of its four relevant experience projects, the protester’s proposal described a task order issued by the Defense Health Agency (DHA) valued at $250 million. Seeking verification due to an apparent clerical error in the stated period of performance of the order, the contracting officer (CO) checked the federal procurement data system (FPDS-NG). In so doing, the CO found that while the order met the solicitation’s recency requirements, FPDS-NG listed the value of the order as a little over $5 million, and thus, much lower than the $30 million threshold required under the solicitation. NASA later eliminated the protester’s proposal from the competition on this basis. In the protest that followed, the protester argued that NASA’s decision to eliminate its proposal from the competition was unreasonable because the disputed experience project involved a DHA catalog valued at $250 million under which the roughly $5 million task order was issued. The protester argued that the agency catalog was equivalent to a single-award blanket purchase agreement (BPA) that offerors were allowed to use as their experience projects under the solicitation’s terms. 

The GAO again disagreed with the protester, noting that the protester’s proposal narrative plainly identified the relevant experience project as a task order and not an agency catalog. The project description provided the order number for the $5 million task order, not the catalog. In fact, the protester’s proposal made no attempt to explain or otherwise demonstrate that the DHA project was an agency catalog, with the word “catalog” failing to appear anywhere in the proposal. It was only after its elimination from the competition that the protester provided NASA with the additional information that the project it submitted was actually an agency catalog. At this point, the agency properly responded that it was not accepting revised proposal information. The GAO reiterated that it was the protester’s burden as an offeror to submit an adequately written proposal that contained all of the information required by the solicitation. Thus, it was the protester’s responsibility to ensure that it conveyed to NASA that the submitted project was an agency catalog or to otherwise adequately address the solicitation’s $30 million experience project value requirement. Since the protester failed to include the necessary information in its proposal, it bore the risk of NASA evaluating its proposal adversely and eliminating it from the competition. Ultimately, the GAO denied the protest, finding that the agency had reasonably determined that the submitted project was a task order that failed to meet the solicitation’s requirements and the protester was properly eliminated from the competition on this basis. 

In negotiated procurements, it is the offeror’s responsibility to submit an adequately written proposal that demonstrates compliance with the solicitation’s material requirements. In this connection, when a proposal inadvertently omits, inadequately addresses, or otherwise fails to convey information in response to the solicitation’s requirements clearly, the offeror risks adverse agency evaluation and potential elimination from the competition. This adverse evaluation risk for offerors is substantial when considering that the GAO does not reevaluate proposals under its bid protest function. Thus, offerors must submit timely, accurate, and complete proposals in the appropriate format for evaluation at the first time of asking. This is especially true when responding to highly competitive solicitations. As demonstrated in the above protests involving NASA’s SEWP VI government-wide contract vehicle procurement, offerors should not expect agency evaluators to seek out missing information from external sources or read between the lines to interpret their proposals beyond what is clearly provided. Similarly, offerors cannot rely on agency evaluators seeking clarifications regarding clerical errors or minor omissions in their proposals when the solicitation contemplates awards without discussions. In such scenarios, it is firmly within the procuring agency’s discretion to contact offerors, as there is no automatic right to clarifications, making it all the more essential to submit a complete and error-free proposal adequately addressing all material solicitation requirements. 

This Bid Protest Insight is provided as a general summary of the applicable law in the practice area and does not constitute legal advice. Contractors wishing to learn more are encouraged to consult the TILLIT LAW PLLC Client Portalor Contact Us to determine how the law would apply in a specific situation.