With the recent reveal of Glock’s entry to the US Army’s Modular Handgun Competition, the 19MHS, we felt it prudent to feature the US Government Accountability Office’s denial of Glock’s protest of the competition results. You can read through all 17 pages of the document by clicking the image above, which goes over Glock’s list of complaints from their protest, including claims of favoritism towards SIG, the contest being ended too early, and the supposed obligation for the US Army to award multiple contracts. Regardless, the following passage details the main reason that SIG won over Glock (emphasis ours):
Based upon the technical evaluation and my comparative analysis of the proposals, the Sig Sauer proposal has a slight technical advantage over the Glock proposal given that their proposal was rated higher in Factor 1, Bid Sample Test – Technical which is the most important factor. The advantage of the Sig Sauer proposal is increased when the license rights and production manufacturing factors are brought into consideration. [. . .] The price analysis shows that the Sig Sauer total evaluated price is $102,705,394 less than the Glock total evaluated price, making the Sig Sauer proposal overall the Best Value to the Government.
Sig Sauer’s proposal was slightly superior technically and clearly superior in factors 4 and 5 [SSD note: License Rights – Ammunition and License Rights – Handgun & Accessories]. Since there were so few other discriminators between the two proposals in most aspects, the least important factor, price, became a significant discriminator. Simply put, when taking the price premium into account, there is no correlating superior performance factor for Glock, as compared to Sig Sauer, to support paying that premium.
Consequently, I cannot justify paying a price premium of over 37% for the Glock submission, even as a second award. One (1) award to Sig Sauer on Solicitation Number W15QKNR-0002 represents the overall best value to the Government.
Ultimately, SIG’s victory came down to them severely underbidding Glock, to the tune of approximately $100 million. That’s not to say price was the only factor; the P320 did perform slightly better in the Technical Bid Sample Test than the Glock equivalent. Not to mention that SIG was able to offer better license rights for the chosen ammunition, handgun, and accessories. Regardless, in the Government’s eyes, the Glock wasn’t worth $100 million more than the SIG.
