United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ______________________

REV, LLC, Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

UNITED STATES, APTIVE RESOURCES, LLC, Defendants-Appellees

DECISIVE POINT CONSULTING GROUP, LLC, Defendant ______________________

2022-1759 ______________________

Appeal from the United States Court of Federal Claims in No. 1:21-cv-01011-PEC, Judge Patricia E. Campbell- Smith. ______________________

Decided: January 29, 2024 ______________________

THOMAS SAUNDERS, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, Washington, DC, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented by JON DAVIDSON LEVIN, Maynard Nex- sen PC, Huntsville, AL.

ERIC JOHN SINGLEY, Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Wash- ington, DC, argued for all defendant-appellee United States. Also represented by REGINALD THOMAS BLADES, Case: 22-1759 Document: 56 Page: 2 Filed: 01/29/2024

2 REV, LLC v. US

JR., MICHAEL GRANSTON, PATRICIA M. MCCARTHY.

JOHN PRAIRIE, Wiley Rein, LLP, Washington, DC, for defendant-appellee Aptive Resources, LLC. Also repre- sented by JENNIFER EVE RETENER, CARA LYN SIZEMORE. ______________________

Before REYNA, TARANTO, and STARK, Circuit Judges. STARK, Circuit Judge. REV, LLC (“REV”) is a veteran-owned small business that provides software consulting services to private and public entities. In response to a solicitation (“Solicitation”) by the Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”), REV partic- ipated in a bid process in hopes of joining the vendor pool for the VA’s Transformation Twenty-One Total Technol- ogy-Next Generation (“T4NG”) program. To determine who to add to its vendor pool, the VA conducted a two-step evaluation of the bids it received. While REV was among the successful participants in the first step, REV was elim- inated at the second stage, never making it to the compet- itive range from which awardees were ultimately selected. REV filed suit against the VA in the Court of Federal Claims. Several winning bidders intervened and also be- came defendants. The Court of Federal Claims granted the motions of the VA and the intervenor-defendants for judg- ment on the administrative record. In doing so, the trial court rejected on the merits REV’s critiques of the VA’s evaluation of the strength of REV’s own proposal. The court then dismissed for lack of standing REV’s challenges to the VA’s evaluation of rival bidders’ submissions and the VA’s establishment of the competitive range. REV now appeals only the portion of the judgment based on its lack of standing. We agree with REV that be- cause REV showed it had a greater than an insubstantial chance of securing an award had certain awardees been ex- cluded from the bid process, which REV alleged they Case: 22-1759 Document: 56 Page: 3 Filed: 01/29/2024

REV, LLC v. US 3

should have been, it has standing. We reverse this portion of the judgment and remand for the Court of Federal Claims to address the merits of REV’s claims attacking the VA’s assessment of competing bids and its establishment of the competitive range. I A According to the VA’s Solicitation, “T4NG is a Multi- Agency, Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ), Multiple Award Task Order contract with a base ordering period of five years with one five-year option period.” J.A. 2055. “The program has a ceiling of $22.3B and supports Contractor-provided solutions of Information Technology (IT), health IT, and telecommunications, to includ