WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) – An elevator company has gone to federal court to dispute the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s decision to contract with a different company.
On Oct. 30 in D.C. federal court, Schindler Elevator Corporation asked for an injunction against WMATA’s contract with Kone, Inc., which has been hired to replace and install escalators in metro stations.
WMATA picked Kone after soliciting bidders on Jan. 30.
“WMATA’s failure to evaluate and identify the strengths and weaknesses of an offeror’s technical proposal is unreasonable where the record shows that the evaluation deviated from the stated evaluation criteria,” the lawsuit says.
“The solicitation further provided that the technical merit of a proposal was more important than the price. Therefore, while the price must be fair and reasonable, WMATA could select and make an award to a proposal that was other than the lowest priced proposal, if it determined by a best value analysis, or a technical/cost tradeoff, that a higher-priced proposal offered the best overall value to the Authority.”