Island Creek Associates, LLC (B-423301.3)

You might care.

Categories: OCI, personal conflict, timeliness

Date: 5 December 2025

URL: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-423301.3

Island Creek Associates challenges the issuance of a $110.7 million Seaport NxG task order to StraCon Services Group for NAVAIR multimission helicopter program management support. The protest does not challenge any evaluation ratings—it is limited entirely to allegations that StraCon's subcontractor, Precise Systems, has unmitigable organizational conflicts of interest and that a senior agency procurement official has a personal conflict.

Precise developed and maintains the Navy's Acquisition Management System software tool, which contains proprietary information from various acquisitions, including Island Creek's data. Precise also performed on the incumbent contract for these same requirements. Island Creek alleged that Precise's role as AMS developer gave it unequal access to competitors' proprietary information and an unfair competitive advantage.

Separately, Island Creek alleged that a senior agency official (Mr. X), previously the chief of the contracting office, was married to a program manager at Precise (Ms. Y) who worked on the AMS tool—creating biased ground rules, impaired objectivity, and at minimum the appearance of impropriety.

Timeliness: The agency and intervenor moved to dismiss as untimely, arguing the solicitation included an OCI list that did not include Precise, and Island Creek should have protested before proposals were due. GAO denied the motion. The rule requiring preaward OCI protests applies only when the agency has affirmatively advised that the conflicted firm is eligible to compete—the absence of a firm from an OCI list is not such an affirmative communication. Island Creek did not learn definitively of Precise's involvement until early February, and the January email identifying Precise went only to lower-level employees. Under Quintron Systems (B-249763), knowledge transmitted only to lower-level employees is not imputed to the protester.

AMS tool OCI: The agency's investigation found that Precise's AMS development team operates in a completely separate physical and network environment from the rest of Precise, with NDAs, an OCI mitigation plan, and strict access controls on the production environment where proprietary data resides. GAO found the investigation reasonable—the agency was not required to audit every employee's access where NDAs covering the relevant information are in place and there is no evidence of violation.

Personal conflict: Ms. Y retired from Precise in December 2022—nearly two years before the solicitation issued—and maintains no financial ties. Mr. X was recused from Precise matters during her tenure. His only involvement in this procurement was minor feedback on early solicitation drafts in 2023–2024, after Ms. Y's retirement. The solicitation was subsequently amended eleven times without his participation. An audit of AMS access confirmed neither Mr. X nor Ms. Y accessed procurement-related proprietary information. GAO found the investigation reasonable and the conclusions well-supported.

The protest is denied.

Digest

1. Request to dismiss post-award protest alleging that the awardee through its subcontractor has unmitigable organizational conflicts of interest as untimely is denied where the agency had not conclusively communicated to offerors that the subcontractor was eligible to participate prior to receipt of proposals.
2. Protest challenging alleged conflicts are denied where the agency's investigation reasonably concluded either that no conflicts existed or that any conflicts were adequately mitigated, and the investigation gave meaningful consideration to all alleged conflicts.