Trilogy’s $93 Million FBI Digital Service Order Survives Protest

The FBI reasonably awarded Trilogy Innovations Inc. a $93 million task order to provide digital and information technology services to the Criminal Justice Information Services Division in West Virginia, the GAO said in a decision released Friday.

Protester Fusion Technology LLC didn’t show show that the FBI erred by concluding that its $74 million bid price was unrealistically low and posed a high risk to the government, the Government Accountability Office said.

The analysis required to assess whether a low bid price reflects a lack of technical competence or understanding is within an agency’s discretion, and agencies use a several methods to assess price realism, the GAO said. Fusion’s protest here amounted to “nothing more than disagreement with the agency’s judgment,” the GAO said.

The solicitation’s price factor said the agency would conduct three separate realism evaluations to determine if a bid price reflected a lack of understanding of contract requirements. The evaluations included examining a bidder’s labor rates against three benchmarks—the General Services Administration’s contract awarded labor categories published rates, historical rates, and the independent government cost estimate rates for each corresponding corresponding government defined labor category, the GAO said.

Fusion argued that the solicitation required the agency to conclude that a labor rate was realistic if it satisfied one of the benchmarks.

But the solicitation didn’t specify whether a labor rate had to exceed one, two, or three of the benchmarks to be realistic, the GAO said.

“While Fusion may have preferred an evaluation where a labor rate was deemed realistic so long as it exceeded one of the three benchmarks, it has not provided any basis for our Office to conclude that the agency was unreasonable in finding labor rates below two of the three benchmarks unrealistic,” the GAO said.

Morrison & Foerster LLP represented Fusion. Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP represented Trilogy.

The case is Fusion Tech. LLC, GAO, B-421560, 4/7/25, decision released 5/2/25