Answer

Federal Acquisition Regulations

Summit Multi-Family Housing Corp. v. The United States, No. 13-80 C (Dec. 17, 2015)

Overview of the case

            Summit Multi-Family Housing (SMHC) is a nonprofit corporation that is based in Ohio and also a public agency that is authorized to enter into annual contributions contracts.  The firm is entitled to enter into Housing Assistance Payments that make rental subsidy payments to those who own existing buildings and provide housing to low-income eligible tenants. On February 5th, 2015 housing and urban development issued an invitation to submit applications. SMHC made submissions for performance-based contract administrators. The organization was selected and issued with letters of acceptance. Other applicants were consequently issued with letters to show they were not selected.  However, they were offered a chance to discuss their deficiencies in a debriefing conference. The unsuccessful applicants filed bid protests with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) contesting selection of SMHC (Summit Multi-Family Housing Corporation v. the United States, 2015).

Why the protest occurred

            The unsuccessful applicants filed bid protests with GAO for the purpose of contesting SMHC selection as the PBCA for New Jersey, New York and Maryland and other forty-two states. It was alleged that the assessment done by the housing and urban development did not conform to procurement laws or ISA. HUD evaluation process of the applications was flawed, but SMHC continued with its transition activities. HUD would later recall the contract process due to the belief that most of the applicants thought evaluation was flawed as there was no information on how evaluation would be carried out. Protesters were concerned that there were parts of ISA that had to be improved to ensure that competition was fair and complied with the applicable law.

Details surrounding the protest

            After the first round of protests, HUD decided to take corrective measures. It repeated the PBACCs in the states that were contested. There were changes made including those of the evaluation criteria that had been challenged on the GAO protests. However, there were pre-award protests filed with GAO representing the second round of protests. GAO sustained the protests citing the HUD was required to make use of a procurement instrument. HUDs use of NOFA had violated Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) and CICA.

FAR Part 15 regulations that allowed the protest

            According to Johnson et al., (2012) The bid protests issued in this case pertained to the issue of selection and the techniques that were used. It is noted that various types of protests are available to the parties that give their offers. Pre-award, award and post-award are some of the notifications that may be given to a government agency. FAR provides that decisions may be challenged when the means of evaluation does not match the criteria that should be used by the procuring agency. In the case presented above, there were concerns that various regulations were not followed to the later by the contracting body. In such a case the remedy is to conduct the procurement process a fresh while taking into consideration the various evaluative processes that pertain to the contracting.

Similar cases whereby the contract award is protested

            There are several cases that where contract rewards are protested due to various reasons. Some of them include the following.

U.S. Security Assocs. v. The United States, No. 15-1197 C (Jan. 12, 2016)

            In this case, the decision of the court was that the protestor lacked standing as its bid was contingent and thus non-responsive to the requirement of solicitation of the firm.

The Alamo Travel Group, LP v. the United States, No. 12-764 C (Dec. 27, 2012)

            A protest was launched against the government for the failure to consider firms past performance in their evaluation criteria. However the court termed it as an untimely challenge to the patent error in the solicitation (Gusman, 2013).

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