The Bid Protest Debrief
Emissary LLC, the incumbent contractor, protested the Department of Defense’s Washington Headquarters Services’ award of a contract to Gemini Industries for technical support services to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict. (See emissary LLC, B-422388.3, et al., July 29, 2025.) GAO sustained the protest, finding that the agency conducted a flawed technical evaluation, improperly credited past performance, and failed to evaluate the impact of an OCI mitigation plan that altered the awardee’s technical approach. This is a rare case where a protester prevailed on both evaluation and organizational conflict of interest (OCI) grounds, offering a roadmap for what can go wrong when agencies rush or overlook key details in an awardee’s proposal.