Perspecta takes NGEN protest to court

Perspecta is going to the next forum in its battle for at least a second chance at retaining its largest contract -- the $7.7 billion Navy NGEN network services award that went to Leidos.

The official reasons behind Perspecta’s complaint filed Thursday to the Court of Federal Claims are unknown as that filing is currently sealed.

Along with that complaint, Perspecta filed a separate motion for a protective order that said its protest to the court follows a prior protest to the Government Accountability Office. The GAO docket numbers mentioned in the protective order motion point to Perspecta’s protest over the Next Generation Enterprise Network-Recompete award that was denied in June.

Officials at Perspecta have not responded to a request for comment, while Leidos declined to comment through a spokesman. Leidos has joined the case as an intervenor-defendant given its status as the awardee.

Leidos was selected for the eight-year contract in February over the incumbent Perspecta and another rival in General Dynamics IT, which also sought to win the NGEN-R competition as a takeaway like Leidos.

Both Perspecta and GDIT subsequently protested to GAO over the Navy’s decision and raised similar issues on how the branch evaluated technical proposals, past performance, pricing and discussions conducted with all three competitors.

Perspecta also claimed Leidos had an organizational conflict of interest and would have had access to information not available to the other bidders.

NGEN is the Navy’s primary IT backbone and services hundreds of thousands of users across both the Navy and Marine Corps. This contract is also the largest Perspecta’s portfolio at between 15 and 20 percent of annual revenue.

During Perspecta’s fiscal year-end earnings call in May, the company gave investors a glimpse at what its financial picture would look like without NGEN in the mix. But Perspecta touted its emphasis on pursuing new business with a much lighter recompete rate of 8 percent over the next three years.

This article first appeared on Washington Technology, a Defense Systems partner site.