GAO decisions/Dismissed/Decided 2 Dec 2025
Ambulance Management Services, Ltd. d/b/a Trans-Care Ambulance
Not an interested party: unchallenged intervening bidders
The procurement
The VA issued an invitation for bids under FAR part 14 on February 19, 2025, as a total small business set-aside for non-emergency ambulance transportation for the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis, with a fixed-price contract over five 1-year ordering periods. Six bids were opened publicly. Heartland Ambulance Service, LLC bid $18,452,800 and received the award on July 28, 2025. Trans-Care's bid of $31,049,618 was the fifth-lowest.
The protest
Trans-Care argued the contracting officer should have found Heartland nonresponsible. It filed declarations from two employees saying a VA official told one of them, on July 28, that Heartland had tried to bribe him to win a different contract. Trans-Care acknowledged it was not immediately next in line, but argued an attempted bribe is grave enough that GAO should hear the challenge anyway.
The agency’s answer
The VA pointed out that three bidders with lower prices stood between Heartland and Trans-Care, and Trans-Care had not challenged any of them. It said no attempted bribe was ever reported to it, and it filed a declaration from the VA official denying he said anything about a bribe and stating that no Heartland employee had ever offered him one.
What decided it
Three lower bidders it never challenged sat ahead of it, so it would not be next in line even if its protest won.
GAO dismissed the protest because Trans-Care was not an interested party. Three intervening bidders had lower bids and Trans-Care did not challenge their eligibility, so even if its allegations had merit, those bidders would be in line for award ahead of it. GAO rejected the argument that a 'sufficiently grave' allegation about responsibility creates an exception, because CICA and GAO's regulations provide none.
“Rather, our Office has consistently decided that where a protester challenges the awardee's responsibility and does not challenge the responsibility or acceptability of the intervening bidders, that protester's interest in the procurement is too remote to render the protester an interested party.”
GAO, B-423804
For the file: When a protest attacks only the awardee, check the protester's place in the bid or ranking order first. If unchallenged offerors sit between them, ask GAO to dismiss for lack of interested-party status, however serious the allegation sounds.
Authorities: 31 U.S.C. § 3551(2)(A); 4 C.F.R. § 21.0(a); 4 C.F.R. § 21.1. Read the decision at GAO →
Facts are condensed from the published decision and the quote is verbatim; the takeaway is ours. Where GAO decided several grounds, only this one is described.
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