## Facts

- The Air Force issued an RFP for custodial services at Hickam Air Force Base under a best-value evaluation considering technical factors and price.
- Cardinal Maintenance Service, Inc., the incumbent contractor, and Navales Enterprises, Inc. submitted proposals.
- The Air Force awarded the contract to Navales on February 20, 2003, and Navales began performance.
- The awarded contract included an “Add/Delete of Service Cost Sheet” intended to permit limited scope adjustments within embedded cost constraints.
- After award, the Air Force modified the Navales contract eight times, increasing the overall contract cost by about 80%.
- The third modification removed the Add/Delete cost sheet, eliminating the contract’s structural limits on the scope and value of changes.
- Following removal of those limits, the Air Force implemented extensive additional work through modifications; at least one major change was later removed from the Navales contract and procured under a separate contract awarded to another contractor.
- Cardinal filed a post-award bid protest in the Court of Federal Claims challenging (1) the award and (2) the legality of the post-award modifications as out-of-scope changes under the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA).
- The parties filed cross-motions for judgment on the administrative record; the government and intervenor moved to strike Cardinal’s extra-record affidavits; Cardinal sought to supplement the record through depositions of Air Force personnel.

## Issues

1. Whether the Air Force violated CICA by implementing post-award modifications that were outside the scope of the original contract and therefore required a new, competitive procurement.
2. Whether extra-record affidavits should be excluded and whether depositions or other discovery should be permitted to supplement the administrative record in the bid protest.

## Decision

- The court granted Cardinal’s motion for judgment on the administrative record and denied the government’s and Navales’s cross-motions.
- The court held the post-award modifications were outside the scope of the original competition and thus violated CICA’s full-and-open-competition requirement.
- The court granted the motions to strike Cardinal’s affidavits as improper extra-record evidence.
- The court denied Cardinal’s request to take depositions, finding the administrative record sufficient to resolve the dispute.
- The court awarded bid-protest relief consistent with the finding of a CICA violation.

## Legal Principles

- CICA requires full and open competition for procurements unless a statutory exception applies; an agency may not use contract modifications to obtain materially different work without competition.
- A contract modification is impermissible when it is outside the scope of the contract as competed; the central inquiry is whether reasonably foreseeable offerors would have anticipated the modification in the original competition.
- Both quantitative and qualitative factors inform scope, including the magnitude of price increases and whether the modified work is materially different from the work solicited and awarded.
- Changes so extensive that they fundamentally alter the bargain resemble a cardinal change and support the conclusion that the agency effectively conducted an uncompetitive new procurement.
- Bid-protest review is generally confined to the administrative record; supplementation and discovery are allowed only in limited circumstances when necessary to permit meaningful review or when the record is inadequate.

## Conclusion

The Court of Federal Claims determined that the Air Force’s extensive post-award modifications—especially after removing contractual change limits and increasing total cost by roughly 80%—were out of scope and amounted to an uncompetitive procurement in violation of CICA, while also enforcing the general rule limiting bid-protest review to the administrative record.


Cardinal Maintenance Serv., Inc. v. United States, 63 Fed. Cl. 98 (2004)