QTC Loses 4 Contracts After Bid Protest

By Walter F. Roche Jr.



A company with ties to a former U.S. Veterans Affairs Secretary has lost four contracts with the veterans agency as a result of successful protest with the U.S. General Accountability Office.
In awards announced this week QTC Management a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin was stripped of awards it had previously been granted to provide disability exams for veterans in four regions of the country.
QTC, a company with ties to former VA Secretary Anthony Principi, will still have contracts in two VA regions.
With the new awards Logistics Health of LaCrosse, Wisc., also a Lockheed Martin subsidiary, gets contracts in four of seven regions.
The new awards follow a GAO review which found that the "VA made several prejudicial errors in evaluating the proposals for these contracts."
 QTC, a California based firm, was once headed by Principi. More recently the former secretary was signed on as a lobbyist for Lockheed.
He has stated that he was not involved in the recent bidding effort.
In addition to Logistics Health , contracts to conduct medical exams were awarded to Medical Support Los Angeles, Veterans Evaluation Services in Texas and VetFed Services of Virginia.
The contracts, if extensions are exercised could have a total value of $6.8 billion.
In its 23-page decision on the original awards in late March, the GAO said it agreed with the protesting firms that the VA's evaluation of prices was "unreasonable
"The agency (VA) essentially changed the evaluation criteria they used to measure price reasonableness," the decision states.
The GAO found that bidders had not been provided with the needed information to shape their bids.