DCS Corporation

The procurement

The Army competed a task order for systems engineering and technical assistance (SETA) support services under its Responsive Strategic Sourcing for Services (RS3) multiple-award IDIQ contract. It awarded to Amentum Services, Inc. at a total evaluated price of $251,658,252, took corrective action after protests, and selected Amentum again in January 2026. Four offerors, including DCS and Amentum, reached the final phase of the competition.

The protest

In its second protest, DCS showed that a firm Amentum had named as a small business subcontractor was actually a large business. The other two finalists had already been found unacceptable on small business participation, so a correct evaluation would have left DCS the only eligible offeror. Instead, the Army amended the RFP's small business participation terms and let all four offerors revise their small business participation, cost/price, key personnel and OCI volumes. DCS argued the corrective action was tailored to let Amentum, and only Amentum, repair its proposal, and pointed to an evaluator's email describing a position as transitioning to the SETA contract with Amentum.

The agency’s answer

The Army said it concluded the RFP's small business participation terms were potentially ambiguous and its evaluation under them unreasonable, and that three of the four offerors had been excluded because of that same provision. Fixing it opened the door for three offerors, not just Amentum, and every offeror could revise its cost/price volume. The evaluator who wrote the email was not involved in approving the corrective action.

What decided it

Agencies have broad discretion over corrective action, and this one was reasonably tailored to the flaw the Army found.

GAO denied DCS's challenge to the scope of the corrective action and dismissed other parts of the protest. The details of corrective action are within the agency's sound discretion, and GAO will not object as long as the action is appropriate to remedy the concern that prompted it. The Army reasonably concluded that ambiguous small business participation terms had excluded three of four offerors, and letting all offerors revise the affected volumes did not appear tailored to benefit any particular firm. The evaluator's email was not the convincing proof needed to show bad faith.