In this month’s bid protest roundup (featured on Law360), we consider three protest decisions the GAO released in the month of July, each of which provides important guidance for companies competing for government...more
Neither rain nor sleet nor quarantine restrictions stop bid protests or our monthly roundup. Thus far the virus has not resulted in dramatic changes to GAO processes, as they have been almost completely electronic from the...more
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released its report on bid protest statistics for Fiscal Year 2019. As in past years, the GAO’s figures count supplemental protests by the same protester and other parties’...more
BID PROTESTS, LATEST DEVELOPMENTS & TWISTS -
Bid Protests: Agenda -
1. LOGCAP V and Task/Delivery Order Protest Jurisdiction
2. SpaceX and Other Transaction Authority Protest Jurisdiction
3. Potential Impact of New...more
Our monthly bid protest Law360 spotlight will discuss a handful of interesting bid protests from the preceding month, highlighting the most noteworthy aspects of the decisions for companies competing for contracts and...more
Those familiar with Federal procurements know the general rule: If you submit a proposal against a solicitation despite disagreeing with one of its provisions, you usually waive the right to challenge that provision in the...more
This month’s selection of bid protests includes discussion of: (1) a successful challenge to a subcontracting restriction in the General Services Administration’s One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services (OASIS)...more
Kenny Rogers once offered some sage advice that’s as applicable to Government contractors as it is to gamblers and human beings in general...more
In an important new decision, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected a line of Court of Federal Claims case law that required agencies to “narrowly tailor” corrective action to fit the procurement errors the...more
Businesses hoping to win a government contract must be familiar and comply with a host of complex timeliness rules, from the deadlines for submitting proposals and revisions, to the rules for protesting a potentially improper...more
This month, we bring you three bid protests from three fora. The first is not a decision at all, but an interesting dissenting opinion from two judges of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, calling into question...more
Most corporate transactions go forward without protests. Several prominent protest decisions over the last few years, however, have drawn attention to the complicated and sometimes unpredictable effect corporate transactions...more
Today’s installment of the post-award protest primer combines two frequent, related protest grounds: (1) unreasonable evaluations and source selection decisions and (2) insufficient documentation. In a future post, we’ll...more
On this blog, we frequently discuss the various timeliness traps that can undermine bid protests at the Government Accountability Office (GAO). A recent bid protest decision from the Court of Federal Claims addresses a...more
Offerors should, and generally do, carefully guard the confidentiality of their bid and proposal information. And agencies that receive that information generally are careful to prevent its improper release, much as they...more
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) will cut the ribbon on its Electronic Protest Docketing System (EPDS) on May 1, 2018, according to a final rule published Monday (at 83 Fed. Reg. 13817). The electronic filing...more
The bait-and-switch in the salesman’s world involves enticing a prospective customer with an unbelievably good deal, only to switch it at the last moment with a bargain that is considerably less attractive to the buyer, and...more
In this roundup of interesting U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) protests released in February, we look at (1) the effect of agency-level protests on GAO protest deadlines; (2) the fairly high bar for winning a...more
Earlier this month, the GAO announced that its long-awaited electronic protest docketing system (EPDS) is now operational and undergoing limited pilot testing with certain designated protests filed since February 1. EPDS is...more
The RAND Corporation’s much-awaited report assessing bid protests of Department of Defense (DOD) procurements is out. The report fulfills a Congressional mandate in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2017...more
Today we’ll consider Organizational Conflicts of Interest (OCIs) as a ground of protest. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) defines an OCI as a situation where “because of other activities or relationships with other...more
Today’s post is the first of two installments on protest grounds related to discussions. This post will focus on the requirement that discussions be meaningful and not misleading, and treat offerors equally. The next post...more
This week we’ll discuss two protest arguments that are, in some ways, two sides of the same coin: unstated evaluation criteria and waived or relaxed solicitation requirements. In each, the focus of the protest is on what...more
Having discussed protest grounds you cannot or should not raise, we turn now to the first in a series of grounds that could result in a sustained protest: Latent Ambiguities and Non-Apparent Solicitation Defects....more
In our last post, we discussed a few procedural rules that can exclude an otherwise meritorious ground from protest. There are also a number of substantive issues that the GAO’s rules exclude from review. See 4 C.F.R. §...more