The Air Force must redo the price reasonableness work behind its worldwide Comprehensive Construction & Engineering (C2E) multiple-award task order contract, and while it does, no new full-and-open task orders will be awarded or solicited under the vehicle apart from three already identified. Judge Dietz of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ordered the remand in MVL USA, Inc. v. United States, No. 25-1664, an opinion filed under seal on Sept. 28, 2026, and reissued for publication on Oct. 15. The ruling gives MVL, which finished outside the award line, a renewed shot at one of the twelve full-and-open contracts, and it shows what happens when an agency runs a price-comparison table without explaining what the numbers prove.
Judge Dietz split the decision. The Air Force's independent government estimate (IGE) had a rational basis, and its unbalanced-pricing analysis was flawed but did not prejudice MVL. The price reasonableness analysis, in the court's words, was "arbitrary and prejudicial."
How the C2E MATOC Competition Was Built
The Air Force issued Request for Proposal FA890324R0023 in July 2024 as a FAR Part 15 best-value procurement to succeed the expiring RE&C and WE&C vehicles. The RFP offered a potential ten-year period of performance, a five-year base ordering period plus five one-year options, and said the Air Force intended to make twelve awards in the full-and-open category.
Evaluation used a highest technically rated offeror (HTRO) method. Offerors scored themselves against objective criteria, the Air Force sorted proposals from highest to lowest self-score and validated the top scores, and each validated offeror then had to clear small business participation and price checks for reasonableness, completeness and balance. Price meant a total evaluated price (TEP), calculated by multiplying government-supplied hours against each offeror's not-to-exceed, fully burdened labor rates across all ordering years. Those rates become contractual ceilings for future task orders.
After final proposal revisions, MVL ranked fourteenth of sixteen offerors. Only the top twelve received IDIQ contracts.
Why the IGE Comparison Survived
MVL argued that the IGE lacked adequate support. The court disagreed, holding that the estimate had a rational basis and that using an IGE is a permissible price-analysis technique under the FAR. Because each TEP came in below a rationally based IGE, the Air Force "acted within its discretion" when it relied on that comparison.
Where the Average-Price Analysis Broke Down
The Air Force did not stop at the IGE. It also calculated the dollar and percentage difference between each offeror's TEP and the average TEP, and that second step undid the evaluation. "However, unlike the Air Force's comparison of the proposed TEPs to the IGE, its comparison of the proposed TEPs to the average TEP was not rational," Judge Dietz wrote.
FAR 15.404-1(b)(2)(i) allows a contracting officer to establish reasonableness by comparing competing prices, but the officer still has to make an individualized determination that a price is fair and reasonable. The record here showed the arithmetic and nothing else. The court found that "the record does not show whether or how the Air Force used such information to determine that each proposed TEP was fair and reasonable," concluding that merely documenting the difference from the average without further explanation "is inadequate for purposes of conducting a meaningful price reasonableness evaluation." That passage quotes Fluor Intercontinental, Inc. v. United States (2020).
The government cited AAR Government Services, Inc. v. United States (2026) and similar decisions upholding comparable price premiums. The judge noted that the contracting officers in those cases supplied additional analysis and explanation that was missing here.
Parsons, Flatiron and Hensel Phelps Supplied the Prejudice
Winning on the merits was not enough; MVL had to show a greater than insubstantial chance of reaching the top twelve. It pointed to three awardees with higher TEPs than its own: Parsons Government Services, Flatiron Dragados Constructors and Hensel Phelps Construction. Each exceeded the average TEP by a larger percentage than MVL did. The exact percentages are redacted in the public opinion.
Had the Air Force explained whether a TEP above the average still represented a fair and reasonable price, the court reasoned, there was a greater than insubstantial chance it would have found two or more of those three prices unreasonable, which would have moved MVL into the award group.
The unbalanced-pricing claim went the other way. The court found that the Air Force's unbalanced-pricing analysis consisted only of year-to-year TEP escalation, that the record showed no evaluation of individual labor rates, and that the Air Force never considered the performance risks of the unbalanced pricing it flagged. But MVL did not identify a single example of another offeror's labor rate that could be found significantly over- or understated. And MVL itself was among seven offerors the Air Force flagged for escalation, with an average rate increase that was the highest of all offerors' proposed escalation rates. A "mere possibility" of a different outcome did not establish prejudice.
What the Remand and Task-Order Freeze Require
The court granted MVL's motion for judgment on the administrative record in part and denied it in part. "Pursuant to RCFC 52.2, this case is REMANDED to the Air Force to correct the flawed price reasonableness analysis consistent with this Opinion and Order," the order states. The Air Force is enjoined to complete its actions on remand in an expedited manner, and the case is stayed in the meantime.
The court weighed the interests of national defense and national security and found that the harm to the government from enjoining performance outweighed the harm to MVL. MVL had earlier agreed to a voluntary stay arrangement under which the Air Force could keep awarding task orders, with notice to MVL before any full-and-open task order above $35 million. Under an agreement the parties communicated to the court on Sept. 28, no further task orders will be awarded or solicited under the full-and-open C2E MATOC during the remand beyond three already-identified orders, and the government had to file a notice by Oct. 7 on any outstanding task-order RFPs.
Joseph L. Cohen of Burr & Forman represented MVL; Alexander S. Brewer of the Justice Department represented the government.
What It Means for Contractors
For the twelve full-and-open awardees, the remand pauses new task-order competition on a worldwide construction vehicle and sends the Air Force back to redo the price reasonableness analysis, which could affect the higher-priced awardees. For firms just below an award line on HTRO or similar ranked-award procurements, the opinion offers a clear protest theory: an agency that computes deviations from the average price must explain why a price above that average is still fair and reasonable, offeror by offeror.
The prejudice ruling carries a caution, too. Protesters need specific competitor-level examples to win; as the unbalanced-pricing claim shows, general claims that a fuller analysis might have changed the result will lose even where the agency erred.
