RFP cancellation and resolicitation due to no acceptable offers

Nick_Sango said:

RFP closed with multiple offers received. Proposals were evaluated and negotiations were conducted. After multiple rounds of negotiations, the proposals were still technically unacceptable.

Question:

Do you know why you did not receive any technically acceptable proposals?

Was it because:

1. there are no capable offerors anywhere, or

2. the solicitation was not open long enough for the preparation of acceptable proposals, or

3. the solicitation was not open long enough for capable firms to discover it and respond, or

4. the solicitation was in some way defective (poorly written, confusing), or

5. the terms of the solicitation were unacceptable to capable firms, or

6. the requirement was too difficult for any firm to satisfy, or

7. some combination of the above, or

8. some other reason or set of reasons?

It seems to me that you should try to find out why you didn't receive and couldn't obtain any technically acceptable proposals from the responding offerors before you make a plan about what to do next.

Or... Are you really asking whether the fact that cancelling would give the incumbent a chance creates a risk?

Hi,

I'm an analyst at the PM, and not on the SSEB so I have limited information. However, it seems only 1 offereor submitted an actual proposal (rather than a generic capability statement submission). The USG clearly asked that offeror to address their throughput capacity, and they ignored the request.

My question is where do we go from here? The contracting team seems to think we need to cancel the entire requirement and submit a new package to pursue a sole source. They made it seem that cancelling the RFP and resoliciting is not an option. FYI - It was already posted as full and open competition. My recommendation was to add additional proposal instructions to the RFP and resolicit. Of course, we have expiring funds so time is of the essence.

Since you aren’t on the SSEB, I don’t know what your involvement and input to the SS at this point are.

You probably can’t answer Vern’s valid questions and probably ought not post them here.

I personally wonder whether there were actually any ORAL discussions between the Government and all these “offerors” and did the firms that submitted proposals say they won’t or can’t meet the current solicitation requirements.

If there were REAL discussions and the firms can’t or won’t meet the current requirements, then the source selection officials should decide whether revised requirements would be acceptable to the government and achievable by the current proposers.

If yes, it might be advisable to revise and continue.

If revisions to the current requirements would result in major changes to the solicitation, .it might be necessary to cancel and re-solicit.

If not acceptable, they will have to decide if they need to continue with the current solicitation or pursue another course of action.

All answers to Vern's questions are "no". RFP was posted for at least 45 days. The incumbent had its proposal ready and forgot to submit due to illness. Oral discussions were held with the 2 offerors. 1 offeror didn't submit a revised proposal and the remaining offer refused to address throughput capacity... no idea why. There's no valid reason to revise requirements. The bottom line is 1 vendor messed up and missed the deadline and the other ones are unresponsive (despite multiple requests).

Nick_Sango said:

My question is where do we go from here? The contracting team seems to think we need to cancel the entire requirement and submit a new package to pursue a sole source. They made it seem that cancelling the RFP and resoliciting is not an option. FYI - It was already posted as full and open competition. My recommendation was to add additional proposal instructions to the RFP and resolicit. Of course, we have expiring funds so time is of the essence.

In light of your answers, I like the contracting team's sole source approach. You had a competition and didn't get any real (effective) competition despite negotiating. So why not go sole source? Why go through another time consuming competition?

I agree with Vern.