AT&T is apparent selection to build FirstNet, as Rivada Mercury files protest over elimination from bid
Specifically, the Rivada Mercury protest—heavily redacted to protect proprietary information—alleges that the DOI conducted premature discussions that were “not meaningful” and “misleading, because they did not address the actual concerns the evaluators had with Rivada Mercury’s proposal and that, apparently, resulted in its wrongful exclusion from the competitive range.
“Had Rivada Mercury had an opportunity to respond to these concerns, or had these concerns been appropriately identified, Rivada Mercury could have explained its proposal—or changed aspects of it—to resolve these evaluation concerns,” according to the lawsuit. “Interior could have thus kept its competitive procurement viable by retaining Rivada Mercury in the competition.”
The protest lawsuit also claims numerous examples of evaluation errors by DOI.
“Interior’s identification of perceived deficiencies and significant weaknesses was, in some cases, the result of applying unstated evaluation criteria, making unwarranted assumptions, misreading Rivada Mercury’s proposal, or arbitrarily increasing the risk associated with a particular concern,” the lawsuit alleges.
A FirstNet spokesperson provided the following prepared statement on the matter:
“Rivada Mercury LLC (Rivada) has filed a bid protest with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (CFC),” according to the FirstNet statement. “The Department of Justice’s Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil Division has assigned counsel to defend against Rivada’s protest and is the counsel that will represent the interests of FirstNet and the federal government in this case. FirstNet program counsel, along with DOI and DOC counsel, will support DOJ’s efforts. We have no further comment, as the matter is pending litigation.”
AT&T declined to comment for this story. Calls by IWCE’s Urgent Communications to officials representing the U.S. Department of Justice were not returned in time to be included in this article.
