

Over the past few years, we’ve seen an erosion of the DoD’s ability to issue solicitations on a lowest-priced technically-acceptable (LPTA) basis. In a new rule effective today, the FAR restricts all agencies—including civilian agencies—from issuing LPTA procurements.
Let’s take a look.
Before we get too far into the weeds, let’s discuss the two main methods by which an agency issues contracts: LPTA and best value. Under an LPTA procurement, the government prioritizes an offeror’s low price—if an offeror submits the lowest price, it will win the award so long as it submits a minimally-compliant solution. A best value procurement, on the other hand, allows the government to award a contract to a higher-priced offeror if that offeror provides technical advantages over its lower-priced competitors.
We’ve seen the government increasingly use best value tradeoff procedures. This should continue because the FAR now restricts the government’s ability to use LPTA procedures.
Under the updated version of FAR 15.101-2, the government can only use LPTA if the following six requirements are met:
If any of these requirements are not met, the agency should use a best value tradeoff to award the contract.
Additionally, the rule identifies acquisitions that agencies should, to the maximum extent practicable, avoid using LPTA procedures:
In short, the new rule significantly restricts the government to use LPTA procedures.
This should benefit small business contractors—in my experience, small businesses have less flexibility to bottom-out their prices in pursuit of an acquisition and instead focus on technical benefits. Keep this in mind if a procurement is issued as LPTA: it could be possible to challenge that designation through a pre-bid protest.
If you have any questions about this new FAR rule, please reach out.