Strategic Communications, LLC

View Decision DOCUMENT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE The decision issued on the date below was subject to a GAO Protective Order. This redacted version has been approved for public release. Decision Matter of: Strategic Communications, LLC File: B-423306.18 Date: May 12, 2026 John L. Holtz, Esq., Shane J. McCall, Esq., Nicole D. Pottroff, Esq., Gregory P. Weber, Esq., and Annie E. Birney, Esq., Koprince Mccall Pottroff LLC, for the protester. Jennifer L. Howard, Esq., and Stephen T. O'Neal, Esq., National Aeronautics and Space Administration, for the agency. Sarah T. Zaffina, Esq., and Heather Weiner, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST Protest is denied where the agency reasonably eliminated protester's proposal from award consideration because the proposal failed to include required information. DECISION Strategic Communications, LLC (Strategic), of Louisville, Kentucky, protests the elimination of its proposal from the competition under request for proposals (RFP) No. 80TECH24R0001, issued by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), for information technology (IT) products, cloud solutions, cybersecurity, and related services. The protester contends that the agency unreasonably eliminated its proposal from the competition for failing to provide required information. We deny the protest. BACKGROUND NASA issued the solicitation on May 23, 2024, in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation part 15, seeking to award the sixth generation of the solutions for enterprise-wide procurement (SEWP VI) government-wide acquisition contract vehicle for IT products and services. [1] AR, Exh. 1A, RFP Cover Letter at 1. The solicitation will result in multiple government-wide indefinite‑delivery, indefinite‑quantity contracts under which fixed-price, time-and-materials, labor‑hour, fixed-price award fee, fixed-price incentive fee, and fixed-price economic price adjustment task orders can be issued. Id. The solicitation contemplated awarding contracts without discussions to all qualifying offerors for an ordering period of 10 years. Conformed RFP at  40, 117. The maximum ordering value is $20 billion. Id. at 44. The solicitation advised that contracts will be awarded for three categories; [2] each category is self-contained with its own separate fulfillment requirements, quotation submission requirements, and evaluation criteria. Id. at 25-39. This protest concerns category B, ITC/AV service solutions. Protest at 2. NASA is conducting this procurement in three phases. Conformed RFP at 117. As relevant to this protest, during phase 1, offerors were required to submit valid ISO 9001 and capability maturity model integration certifications, demonstrate that they met mandatory experience requirements, and submit a North American Industry Classification System code crosswalk. Id. at 117-19. For the mandatory experience requirement, the solicitation required offerors to submit four different relevant experience projects (REPs) addressing different technical areas related to the given category requirements. Id. at 105. Each project must be completed or ongoing within three years of the solicitation's release date and have a total value of at least $30 million for “a single specific contract, single award [indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ)] contract or blanket purchase agreement, or task order, but may not be based on a multiple[-]award IDIQ contract.” Id. Offerors must submit their projects using the REP template included with the solicitation. Id. ; AR, Exh. 15B, Conformed RFP exh. 1, REP Template. The solicitation notified offerors that that the agency would evaluate proposals on a pass/fail basis under phase 1 and that if a proposal did not meet all the requirements, the proposal would be ineligible for award and excluded from the competition. Conformed RFP at 118-19. Strategic timely submitted its proposal, and as relevant here, identified in the REP template its four required experience projects. AR, Exh. 17A, Strategic Offer Vol. at 5. The agency reviewed Strategic's proposal and found one of the four projects submitted did not appear to meet the recency requirement--it was not ongoing or completed within three years of the soliciation's release date. COS at 5; AR, Exh. 19, Down‑Select Notice at 1. Specifically, Strategic's proposal identified an experience project for what the proposal described as a task order issued by the Defense Health Agency (DHA) for cloud services to be performed in the future between August 26, 2026, and June 22, 2028. AR, Exh. 17C, Strategic REP exh. 1, DHA at 1; see also COS at 5. Because the period of performance appeared to be a clerical error, the contracting officer looked up the contract in the federal procurement data system (FPDS-NG) to verify performance dates. [3] COS at 5; AR, Exh. 19, Down‑Select Notice at 1.