| | U.S. upholds DynCorp protest of Afghanistan orders Reuters
03/15/2010
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* Company says competition will lead to best outcome
* Senator says ruling makes fair competition more likely
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Government Accountability Office upheld a protest by DynCorp International Inc (DCP.N) against the U.S. Army's plan to award task orders for training Afghan police and other officials under earlier contracts.
The GAO, the congressional agency responsible for reviewing federal bid protests, said on Monday it agreed with DynCorp that the training, logistics and other work in question exceeded the scope of the previous Army contracts, which focused on counter-narcoterrorism efforts.
It recommended that the Army cancel plans to solicit the work under multiple award contracts, and conduct a full and open competition, or submit the data needed under federal law to justify limited competition. A task order is essentially a small order under a bigger umbrella contract.
DynCorp Chief Executive Bill Ballhaus welcomed the ruling and said his company looked forward to bidding for the work.
DynCorp filed its protest in December after learning that the Afghan civilian police training contract would not be competitively bid, and argued that the previous contract structure was never intended for such work.
DynCorp is already doing similar police training work in Afghanistan under a State Department contract that is in the process of being transferred to the Pentagon.
Full and open competition for the new work would result in the best outcome for taxpayers, the Afghan people and the U.S. mission, the company said in a statement.
Ralph White, the GAO's acting managing associate general counsel for procurement law, said the GAO concurred with DynCorp's assessment, noting that the previous contracts covered technology development, training and other analyses related specifically to counter-narcoterrorism efforts.
The two task order solicitations that the Army had planned to award under those contracts were "significantly broader," including training and logistics support for Afghan police and security forces, and logistics support, including operation of dining halls and maintenance of vehicle fleets, at 15 U.S. military camps in Afghanistan, he said.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin welcomed the GAO ruling, and said it made full and fair competition among contractors more likely.
"Too often, unrelated task orders are added onto already existing orders, limiting the number of companies that can compete for valuable government business," Levin said in a statement.
He said he hoped that the Pentagon would take a close look at privately held Blackwater, which has been under fire for its military contracting in Iraq, if it bid for the contract under a new competition.
The Army had no immediate comment. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Steve Orlofsky, Tim Dobbyn and Bernard Orr)
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