Bid Protests

Subscribe to Bid Protests via RSS

After years of anticipation, the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Council has announced the arrival of its proposed rule to enhance the safeguarding of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) in federal contracts (the Proposed Rule). Published in the Federal Register on January 15, 2025 (90 FR 4278), the Proposed Rule (stemming from FAR Case 2017-016) has been a long time coming and is intended to establish a government-wide standard for managing sensitive information, ensuring CUI uniformity and consistency across all agencies and federal contracts.Continue Reading They Did It. They Really Did It! The Arrival of the FAR CUI Proposed Rule

On January 8, 2025, in UNICA-BPA JV, LLC, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) sustained a protester’s challenge to its elimination from the competition for failing to have an active System for Award Management (SAM) registration at the time of its initial proposal submission. The GAO sustained the protest because the protester’s registration was in fact active at the time it submitted its final proposal revision (FPR) even though it was inactive at the time of initial proposal submission. The facts of the case are straightforward:Continue Reading What Happens When Uncle Sam Doesn’t Understand SAM? The Case of the Lucky Protester . . .

Virtually every year, the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO’s) Bid Protest Annual Report includes “flawed technical evaluations” as one of the top five most common grounds for successful protests. Simply stated, this means that if a protest is to be sustained at the GAO, there is a good chance the Government watchdog will find that the agency failed to evaluate the protester’s and/or awardee’s technical proposal in accordance with the solicitation’s disclosed evaluation methodology. It follows, of course, that more complex evaluation schemes (i.e., those with a multiplicity of factors, sub-factors, and weighting systems) carry a commensurately higher level of risk that agency evaluators will get it wrong. The GAO’s recent decision in AT&T Mobility, LLC provides one such example and is a useful case study for contractors.
Continue Reading The Devil Is in the Details: Recent GAO Decision Underscores the Importance of Checking the Agency’s Math

Although many of us have canceled vacations during this (unusual) year, summer is nevertheless upon us. While we wholeheartedly recommend firing up the grill and enjoying the sunshine in the coming months, companies planning to enter into joint venture (JV) agreements to compete for Government contracts should first make sure that they set aside some time to consider the impacts of proposed changes coming to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). These changes have the potential to create significant opportunities for both veteran Government contractors and new entrants to the federal marketplace who might consider competing for procurements through JV agreements.
Continue Reading Proposed Rule Introduces Critical Changes for SBA Contractors

In the course of responding to a Request for Proposals (“RFP”) or Request for Quotations (“RFQ”), have you ever encountered technical specifications that you regard as unreasonable? Have you ever wondered why the Government included those specifications in the first place and, more generally, whether those specifications are even necessary to fulfill the requirements giving rise to the acquisition? If your company is like most out there, the answer to these questions is a resounding “yes!” What to do next, you ask? A recent case before the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) is instructive.
Continue Reading Recent GAO Decision Gives Ammunition To Protesters Challenging Technical Specifications

As a bid protest lawyer, one of the most frequent questions I hear from companies considering whether to pull the trigger and file a pre- or post-award bid protest is “Can we win?” My response – regardless of the meritorious nature of the protest grounds and the corresponding flaws in the procurement – is necessarily tempered by sobering data that confirms what most seasoned government contractors already know: prevailing in a bid protest is an uphill battle. For example:
Continue Reading Protesters’ Paradise at the GAO? Understanding the Rapid Rise in the GAO’s FY 2016 Bid Protest Sustain Rate

If you’ve recently considered filing a bid protest, you may have found yourself out of luck due to the expiration of the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s (“GAO”) statutory jurisdiction to hear certain protests involving task and delivery orders. Since 2008, the GAO has been the exclusive forum for prospective contractors to assert a protest challenging task order solicitations and awards with an anticipated value of $10 million or more, which have historically accounted for approximately 10% of protests filed at the GAO since that time. However, the GAO’s authority to hear protests involving civilian agency task orders – aside from those arguing that the order increases the scope, period, or maximum value of the underlying contract – expired on September 30, 2016, when Congress failed to pass legislation that would have extended the GAO’s task order protest jurisdiction.
Continue Reading Task and Delivery Order Bid Protests Are Back in Business at the GAO