Supplying Demand, LLC (B-423810, B-423810.2)

You should not care.

Categories: Pricing, compliance, clarifications, discussions

Date: 24 November 2025

URL: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-423810%2Cb-423810.2

Supplying Demand, LLC, a service‑disabled veteran‑owned small business, protested the FBI’s elimination of its proposal from a small‑business set‑aside competition for the Strategic Tactical Equipment Acquisition and Logistics (STEAL) multiple‑award IDIQ. The RFP required offerors to submit prices using a specific Excel price‑proposal spreadsheet.

Failure to follow the pricing template: Instead of submitting the completed price‑evaluation list from the required spreadsheet, Supplying Demand combined tabs from different attachments and added its own pricing columns. The FBI determined that the submission was not on the required form and that the added structure made an apples‑to‑apples price comparison impossible.

Clarifications vs. discussions: The protester argued the agency should have sought clarifications to fix any “visual formatting issue.” GAO disagreed, holding that the defect was material: curing it would have required the offeror to redo its pricing in the mandated format, which would constitute discussions, not clarifications. The FBI had reserved the right to award without discussions and reasonably declined to reopen pricing.

Takeaways: When solicitations prescribe a specific pricing workbook and warn that deviations can render offers ineligible, agencies may reject non‑compliant price submissions without discussions, even where the offeror believes the same data are “all there.”

Digest

Supplying Demand, LLC, a service‑disabled veteran‑owned small business of Derry, New Hampshire, protests the elimination of its proposal from the competition under request for proposals (RFP) No. SHOP‑PR‑001071, issued by the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for the award of multiple indefinite‑delivery, indefinite‑quantity contracts to provide various types of tactical equipment and related incidental services. The protester contends that the FBI unreasonably rejected its price proposal as noncompliant.