PilieroMazza assisted an intervenor in defending a contract awarded to the company that was protested multiple times by NEQ, LLC (NEQ) to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and then to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (COFC).  The contract in question was awarded to the intervenor by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the performance of emergency and rapid response services in EPA’s Region 5 (consisting of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota). 

In protesting the award to the intervenor, NEQ made a number of arguments, all of which the COFC rejected.  First, NEQ argued that the EPA improperly used unstated evaluation criteria when evaluating the offerors’ proposals by placing emphasis on the intervenor's proximity to major population centers in Region 5 while failing to give similar credit to NEQ for having its main bases of operation in rural areas.  Second, NEQ alleged that EPA erroneously gave the intervenor credit for certain limited-purpose specialty subcontractors because those specialty subcontractors did not provide letters of intent in the intervenor's proposal.  Lastly, NEQ asserted a multitude of other arguments that purported to show the impropriety of the EPA’s award to the intervenor. 

In its ruling, the COFC rejected all of the arguments put forth by NEQ.  Specifically, the COFC found that the EPA reasonably took the intervenor's proximity to major population centers into account when giving the intervenor higher technical ratings than those given to NEQ.  The COFC based its decision upon the fact that, while the solicitation did not specifically indicate that proximity would be an evaluation factor, it did state that offerors had to respond to major population centers within four hours of an emergency being reported, but that they only had to respond in six hours to rural areas.  The COFC also stated that the EPA could rely upon the intervenor's specialty subcontractors despite the fact that no letters of intent were provided because the other language in that proposal made it clear that the intervenor had an ongoing working relationship with such named specialty subcontractors.  The rest of NEQ’s arguments were summarily rejected by the COFC.