HANDYMAN 
MATOC – Some Winners and Mostly Losers
There is an old saying that “you win some, and you lose some.” Well, if you are a construction contractor who competes in the world of Multiple Award Task Order Contracting (“MATOC”), you usually lose. Under sealed bidding, which dominated the procurement of federal construction for many years, a contractor who was not the low bidder could always compete for the next project. In the MATOC arena, a contractor who is not selected to be one of the chosen few to compete for task orders over what is often a three to five year period may not be able to compete for the “next project” for a long time. What this means is that there are a few winners, but there are many more losers.
Even if a contractor is fortunate enough to be selected as one of the MATOC master contract holders, there is no guarantee of being selected for future task orders. Every construction MATOC features a “seed” project that serves as the basis of the price competition for the evaluation of the offers on the master contracts. If a contractor does not win the seed project, there may not be another task order for a long time, and the award of the ensuing task orders may go to someone other than the low bidder. The reason for this is that most construction MATOCs are negotiated, best value, procurements (“RFPs”), and past performance, experience, technical merit, quality of personnel, small business subcontracting, and other evaluation factors may come into play. Although it can be argued that the award of a master MATOC should pre-qualify all of the MATOC holders, we have heard complaints from a number of contractors who lose out in the competition for task orders because they do not score well on past performance, or one of the other evaluation factors. This has never made sense to me because if a contractor has won the fierce competition for one of the master MATOCs, price should be the discriminator for the task order awards. If the contractor is not technically qualified to receive a task award on a lowest price proposal, why was the contractor selected as one of the MATOC holders in the first place?
Those who are really left out in the cold, however, are the construction contractors who fail to win one of the master MATOC awards. Simply because a contractor may not have scored particularly well technically, or simply because the contractor’s price on a seed project may have been too high, does not mean that it will always be that way. A contractor can do a much better job of putting together a competitive proposal the next week, but if all of the upcoming projects are tied up in MATOCs, the door is closed. Simply because a contractor submits the lowest price on a seed project does not mean that the contractor will be similarly competitive on future projects. It is for this reason that I have been a frequent critic of indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (“IDIQ/MATOC”) contracting for construction. I do not believe that FAR 16.5, dealing with various indefinite delivery contracts, was ever meant to be applied to construction, and I believe that the system unfairly penalizes a lot of very qualified contractors who simply are not adept at proposal writing. Construction was successfully procured using sealed bidding for many years, and that system was more open and fair. The new system simply results in too many losers and not enough winners. (See the earlier article “Has the Corps of Engineers Gone MATOC Crazy?”).
Michael H. Payne is the Chairman of the firm’s Federal Practice Group and, together with other experienced members of the group, frequently advises contractors on federal contracting matters. He also serves as the Executive Director of FedCon Consulting, an ancillary business of the firm that involves former contracting officers, procurement and technical personnel, as well as lawyers, in providing assistance to federal construction contractors in the preparation of proposals.
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