GAO Sustains Protest of VA’s Past Performance Evaluation—Agencies Must Use the Evaluation Criteria Present in the Solicitation
Article by: Tyson Marx, Partner
An agency’s failure to follow the evaluation criteria present in a solicitation remains one of the most successful protest grounds at GAO.
On July 10, 2026, GAO sustained the protest of Veterans Management Services, Inc. (VMSI) on the basis that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) failed to follow its own evaluation criteria in making an award to Dynamic Management Associates, LLC (DMA).
VMSI protested the VA’s award to DMA under a Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) procurement using FAR subpart 8.4. The RFQ required VA to make its award based on a best‑value tradeoff considering past performance and price, with past performance being approximately equal to price. For past performance, the RFQ instructed vendors to submit three past performance reference contract worksheets (PPRCWs), which VA was to review in accordance with each vendor’s CPARS for those projects to determine a past performance rating. The RFQ’s evaluation criteria stated that recent experience (i.e., performance within the past three years) “may be viewed more favorably” than performance older than three years. However, the RFQ did not state that older performance would be excluded from consideration or that the Agency would cease its evaluation of any CPARS for a project greater than three years old.
The Agency Report revealed that the VA treated recency in its source selection process differently than it had in the RFQ. In particular, the VA treated recency as a binary gating mechanism in which any quote with a PPRCW older than three years would not have its CPARS information evaluated.
GAO found this approach inconsistent with the RFQ because it effectively precluded consideration of older CPARS references. VA’s failure to review CPARS information for any project older than three years resulted in competitive prejudice as to VMSI. VA did not consider multiple VMSI CPARS references older than three years, all of which had high performance evaluations. Because past performance was approximately equal to price in the best‑value tradeoff, VA’s resulting tradeoff was necessarily flawed.
Bottom Line
Flawed evaluation protests are incredibly fact-specific and might not be readily apparent from an agency’s debriefing materials. We highly recommend seeking legal counsel to help determine if and when an agency’s evaluation of your proposal or quote becomes impermissible.
For this and more bid protest and government contract updates, visit our blog at: https://www.wardberry.com/blog/