There is a particular kind of loss that nobody warns you about at the capture stage. You are the lowest price. The buy is lowest price technically acceptable. You have effectively already won. Then the contracting officer sends a polite email asking you to correct an error in your pricing sheet, you correct it, and the correction costs you the contract.
That is GAO B-424477, decided August 7, 2026 and carried in the recent decisions listing through the week of August 28. LOGMET LLC of Round Rock, Texas protested the award to SkyQuest Aviation LLC of Glendale, Arizona under RFQ No. 70Z03825QS0000020, a Department of Homeland Security buy run by the US Coast Guard for aircraft maintenance and aviation life support equipment support at Air Station Atlantic City, the Aviation Training Center at Mobile, and Joint Base Andrews. Set aside for service disabled veteran owned small business, FAR part 12, lowest priced technically acceptable.
GAO denied the protest on every ground. The interesting part is not that LOGMET lost. It is the size of the number that moved.
The Three Prices
| Quote | Price | Position |
|---|---|---|
| LOGMET, as originally submitted | 5,771,306 dollars | Lowest, by 171,102 |
| SkyQuest Aviation | 5,942,408 dollars | Awarded |
| LOGMET, as corrected on March 4 | 7,198,870 dollars | 1,256,462 above the award |
The correction added 1,427,564 dollars to LOGMET’s own price. That is a 24.7 percent increase on its original quotation, produced by one email, on a competition where being cheapest was the entire evaluation.
What The Error Actually Was
The RFQ attached a schedule of services with cells highlighted in yellow for unit pricing by labor category, and warned that an incorrect or incomplete schedule “may not be evaluated nor considered for award.” Eight firms quoted. The Coast Guard then issued amendment 0002 on February 26, 2026 to fix its own error, an incorrect citation to FAR 13.202 where the evaluation would actually run under FAR 12.203, reopened the solicitation and extended the deadline to March 2. Five firms came back, LOGMET among them, and LOGMET said it had no changes.
On review the agency found two of the five had filled the schedule out wrong in the same way. LOGMET and D2 Government Solutions had both priced the option year monthly rates for aircraft mechanic I, aircraft mechanic II and ALSE inspector maintainer as if those positions sat at Air Station Atlantic City. The schedule of services placed them at Joint Base Andrews. Contract line items 1 through 9, option periods 1 through 4.
The lead contract specialist wrote to both firms, told them to revise the pricing to reflect the Joint Base Andrews rates, and said plainly that failing to send a revision would remove their quotations from award consideration. Both revised. LOGMET’s revision came back on March 4 from an individual acting on its behalf, with two LOGMET employees copied including the company president. The price on it was 7,198,870.
Why The Protest Failed
LOGMET made three arguments and lost all three, and each loss is worth a separate note.
One. A revised quotation supersedes the original one.
LOGMET argued that the agency should not have used the March 4 number, that no new schedule of services had been sent, and that it never conceded the revision superseded its operative quote. GAO pointed to IDB International, B-257086, from July 1994: a protester cannot plausibly argue that a revised quotation did not supersede the initial one. It also noted that Wayne Rankin, the man who filed the protest for LOGMET, was copied on the email that transmitted the revised price. Nobody at LOGMET asked why the revision was needed or told the agency not to use it.
The line that ends this ground is short: absent the revision, LOGMET’s quotation would not have been considered for award at all. The choice was not between 5,771,306 and 7,198,870. It was between 7,198,870 and being thrown out.
Two. Discussions with two firms and not the third is not unequal treatment.
LOGMET called it an unauthorized post closing price correction process. The Coast Guard said it had let the two firms with broken schedules fix them, because otherwise both would have been removed for not following instructions. SkyQuest’s schedule had no errors, so SkyQuest was not contacted.
GAO applied the standard from HomeSafe Alliance, B-418266.5, October 2020, that discussions must be meaningful, equitable and not misleading, and found the record satisfied it. Both defective vendors got the same notice and the same opportunity. The firm that did not need fixing did not get contacted, which is what equal treatment looks like when the firms are not in equal positions.
Three. The evaluation followed the scheme the RFQ announced.
LOGMET argued that the award was flawed because the agency never determined whether LOGMET was technically acceptable before awarding to a higher priced firm. Under LPTA, only the lowest priced quotation gets evaluated for technical acceptability, and the sequence continues down the price order only if that one fails. After the revision LOGMET was not the lowest price, so its technical volume was never opened. That is not a defect in the evaluation. That is the evaluation.
On the disparate treatment ground, LOGMET pointed at a page of SkyQuest’s technical quotation that appeared to frame Joint Base Andrews as an option period one location. GAO read the rest of the document, which said locations “will adjust to Joint Base Andrews, MD as instructed.” That is an affirmative commitment. LOGMET’s own quotation contained no equivalent sentence. Under simplified acquisition procedures the standard from Significance Inc., B-421307, March 2023, applies: disagreement with the agency’s judgment, without more, does not make the evaluation unreasonable.
Three Things To Take Out Of This
The pricing sheet is a compliance document, not an admin task. LOGMET’s substantive error was putting option year labor at the wrong installation. That is a ten minute mistake in a spreadsheet and it cost 1,427,564 dollars of quoted price and a 5.9 million dollar contract. On an LPTA buy the schedule of services is the proposal. Everything else is a formality.
When an agency asks you to correct a price, price the correction before you send it. Nobody at LOGMET appears to have asked what the revision would do to its standing. It went from 171,102 dollars under the eventual awardee to 1,256,462 dollars over. If the corrected number puts you out of contention, that is the moment to find out, because the alternatives at that point are still on the table and they will not be later.
Being copied on the email is being on the hook. GAO specifically noted that the protest’s own author was on the transmission of the revised price. A protest theory that your company did not really mean to send the thing your representative sent, with your president copied, does not survive contact with the record.
The Receipts
GAO B-424477, B-424477.2. Protester LOGMET LLC, Round Rock, Texas. Agency: Department of Homeland Security, US Coast Guard. RFQ No. 70Z03825QS0000020, aircraft maintenance and aviation life support equipment maintenance and support services at Air Station Atlantic City, New Jersey, the Aviation Training Center at Mobile, Alabama, and Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. Service disabled veteran owned small business set aside, FAR part 12, lowest priced technically acceptable with acceptable past performance. Eight quotations received, five after amendment 0002. Awardee SkyQuest Aviation LLC, Glendale, Arizona, at 5,942,408 dollars. LOGMET quoted 5,771,306 and revised to 7,198,870. Decided August 7, 2026 and carried in GAO’s recent decisions listing through the week of August 28, 2026. Protest denied.