Legal Meets Practical

by Sarah Schauerte

On November 27, the Washington Business Journal relayed that the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) had ended a three-year contract with Alexandria company, Ardelle Associates (Ardelle), a federal contractor that has been processing applications submitted to the Center for Verification and Evaluation (CVE). Ardelle’s contract had already been extended twice since September 2010. The VA had expressed an intention to extend it again, through the end of February to allow time to compete a follow-on contract but – for reasons unexplained – did not.

Ardelle President Art Forcey was told on November 22 that the contract would extend until December 18. On November 26, he was told it would end December 2. That’s not a lot of notice, especially given that the days between November 26 and December 2 include Thanksgiving and two weekend days. Now that the contract is in limbo, the VA plans to put into place a short-term contract for five months until a long-term solution can be implemented. This makes perfect sense of course, as there was no conceivable way the VA could have known that it would need someone to process VetBiz applications after Ardelle’s contract expired.

The work will be competed under the VA’s IPT blanket purchasing agreement, giving an opportunity to bid to about half a dozen companies with no current role processing applications. A solicitation was released earlier this week, with bids due only a week later (December 3). The VA somehow expects that it will be able to kick off a new contract by December 6.

In an effort to potentially speed up the process of filling the contracted positions, the names of Ardelle employees supporting the current contract were provided to the IPT contracting officer (CO) to “make a determination about what is appropriate and legal to forward to offerors and awardees.”

The practical effect of this is important to note. This means that if the CO deems it “appropriate” and “legal,” the same evaluators will be performing the work…they’ll just have a different boss. This means that if the VA isn’t happy with the job Ardelle is doing, for all intents and purposes VetBiz verification won’t likely see much of an improvement because the players won’t change.

This also means that Ardelle loses its ability to remain competitive for the re-compete. If “appropriate” and “legal,” its employees will be jumping ship for the short-term contractor. This isn’t lost on Ardelle. Mr. Forcey shared with the Washington Business Journal that he thinks this move is political – to keep Ardelle out of the picture for the recompete. As he said: “I think delays in getting a new competition started caused infighting about what to do and people took some heat for extending our contract. But this isn’t the right way to go.”

This development has numerous negative implications. First of all, bringing in a short-term contractor will require re-training of evaluators. This can (and should) take weeks or months, as the VetBiz regulations are nuanced and veteran business owners deserve to have their applications properly evaluated. This, along with the transition in contractors in general, will create delays in VetBiz application processing.

Then, by the time the CVE begins operating at normal speed, the short-term contract will end.

There’s also the issue of the new, short-term contactor using Ardelle’s former employees. I would bet that these employees have a non-compete clause in their contracts with Ardelle which prohibits them from jumping from one lily pad to another.

Stay tuned in the weeks to come, because this development will be getting a lot of press. This press might be enough to cause the VA to back down and give Ardelle another extension while it prepares for the re-compete, but you just never know.

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