Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority's (MWAA) contracting practices.

GAO found that: (1) the MWAA process for awarding contracts for goods, services, and construction projects is competitive but highly focused on soliciting vendors in the Washington, D.C. area; (2) MWAA awarded firm, fixed-price contracts for goods, services, and construction to the lowest bidder that met the required technical specifications and standards described in the solicitation; (3) in some instances, MWAA used a two-step solicitation method for design and construction contracts by requesting and evaluating the qualifications of prospective contractors before issuing the solicitation; (4) MWAA awarded architectural/engineering service contracts after evaluating each bidder's capability and qualifications to perform the services; (5) some of the criteria used to evaluate proposals could be interpreted as unnecessarily restrictive by potential bidders; (6) existing MWAA contracting policies do not establish who is responsible for deciding whether solicitation evaluation criteria are appropriate; (7) 23 percent of the contracts reviewed were appropriately awarded as sole-source contracts; (8) announcements for contracts were routinely published in a newspaper, but only two were published outside the Washington, D.C., area; (9) solicitations for concession services contracts are advertised both nationally and locally because of the need to attract national businesses; and (10) MWAA has not published its procedures for awarding contracts.