As projected in a recent Year in Defense Online news item (“FMTV Seeks Contract Traction“), mid-February 2010 has brought an end to slipping and sliding with the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) as the U.S. Army reaffirmed the manufacturing contract award originally made to Oshkosh Corporation on Aug. 26, 2009.
The FMTV re-buy program is a five-year, firm fixed-price requirements contract for the production of up to 23,000 vehicles and trailers, as well as support services and engineering.
Following the August 2009 award, protests had been filed to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) by both BAE Systems and Navistar Defense, LLC. After considering those industry protests, on Dec. 14, 2009, the GAO’s managing associate general counsel for procurement law released that agency’s findings, noting that the protests were upheld due to some flaws identified in the original evaluation process. The GAO finding recommended that the Army “reevaluate the offerors’ proposals under the capability evaluation factor, in a manner consistent with the terms of the solicitation; conduct a new evaluation of Navistar’s past performance that adequately documents the agency’s judgments; and make a new selection decision. We also recommended that if, at the conclusion of the reevaluation, Oshkosh is not found to offer the best value, the agency should terminate Oshkosh’s contract for the convenience of the government. We further recommend that Navistar and BAE be reimbursed the costs of filing and pursuing the successful grounds of their protests related to their challenge of technical and past performance evaluation issues, including reasonable attorney fees.”
The Army had 60 days to inform the GAO of its actions in response to those recommendations.
On Feb. 12, 2010, Oshkosh Corporation announced that the U.S. Army had affirmed the original contract award, noting, “The bids of all three competitors for the FMTV program were re-evaluated by the U.S. Army in response to recommendations made by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) following a review of competitors’ protests of the original contract award to the company. The Army undertook an exhaustive review during this FMTV bidding process and applied fairness and rigor to its decision. Upon completion of a thorough, in-depth re-evaluation, the Army determined the contract would remain with Oshkosh. Additionally, the Army canceled the Sept. 4, 2009, stop-work order it had issued pursuant to the GAO’s protest procedures.”
The corporate announcement added, “The Oshkosh contract allows the Army and U.S. taxpayers to begin realizing significant cost savings for the FMTV program.”