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GAO upholds Bollinger patrol boat contract

The Government Accountability Office on Jan. 12 upheld the service’s decision to award the $88 million contract to Bollinger Shipyards Inc., essentially approving all the changes in the acquisition directorate and also upholding the way the service now conducts acquisitions, said Rear Adm. Gary Blore, assistant commandant for acquisitions.

Rival contractor Marinette Marine Corp. filed a protest with federal regulators Oct. 7, putting the patrol boat replacement program on hold. At the time, Marinette would not discuss why they filed the protest, but it is largely assumed the decision was based on Bollinger’s involvement in the failed conversions of the service’s 110-foot Island-class cutters into 123-foot cutters. The failed conversions, which Bollinger designed, and the resulting media fallout forced senior leaders to revamp the Coast Guard’s acquisition service.

“The Coast Guard had been confident, especially given the acquisition reforms our agency has put in place and with the rigor and discipline followed throughout the process for this patrol boat contract award, that GAO would ultimately uphold the Coast Guard’s decisions,” Blore wrote in a statement released on Jan. 13.

“I appreciate the role the GAO plays in maintaining transparency and equity of the federal procurement process and now that GAO has issued its decision, we can proceed with this critically important Coast Guard acquisition program.”

Marinette Vice President and General Manager Richard McCreary said the company is disappointed in the decision but not surprised, adding he is waiting to see the full decision — once certain information is redacted — before deciding where to go from here.

“Protests are always something of a long shot, but we wouldn’t have [filed one] if we didn’t think we had reasonable grounds to question the decision,” McCreary said.

Bollinger Chairman and CEO Donald “Boysie” Bollinger said through a spokesman that the company is happy with the ruling and anxious “to get back to work on designing and building the USCG’s [Fast Response Cutter] ‘Sentinel’ patrol boats.”

The stop-work order is no longer in effect and work will resume shortly. If all the options are exercised, the contract could include up to 34 153-foot Sentinel-class patrol boats that will replace the aging 110-foot patrol boats, for a total value of $1.5 billion.

The patrol boat replacement program is the Coast Guard’s first acquisition effort separate from Integrated Coast Guard Systems. Blore said in a telephone interview that with this decision in writing, anyone can be confident in the Coast Guard’s acquisition abilities.

“It’s big because of the general statement it makes about our acquisition process because this is the same process we use for everything,” he said. “There is nothing unique about the patrol boat. It’s the way we do acquisitions. It’s nice that a very independent, experienced party, in the GAO, upheld that. We respect the fact that because of mistakes that have been made in the past we needed to improve our processes, and we think this upholding of the award of the contract does just that.”

Under federal regulations, the GAO had up to 100 days to render a decision from the time the protest was filed or from the time any amendments were filed. Marinette filed two amendments, which could have pushed the decision into February. Blore said the GAO looked at thousands of pages of documents that included “all aspects” of the acquisition process, in addition to documents from each of the companies, before rendering a decision.