Government Contracts

Because a protest can adversely impact a government contractor’s relationship with its customer, to say nothing of being costly, unsuccessful offerors might be tempted to file a protest only after they have good facts to base a protest on. Recently, however, an incumbent contractor waited too long, according…

It is not unusual for an offeror to lose a contract for not giving the government enough information. The opposite, though, can happen. Recently, an offeror lost a contract for submitting too much information. Offerors competing for a contract for constructing a government building had…

Contrary to the cliché that “the devil is in the details,” an offeror’s proposal must give the agency evaluating the proposal enough information – details – to let the agency evaluate how well the offeror can do the contract work. Lack of details was a factor in a contractor losing…

Any contractor working its way through registering in SAM knows how many different ways the government identifies a contractor. There is a DUNS number, a CAGE Code as well as a company name, and perhaps a doing business as (DBA) name. When a company has divisions, those numbers can be…

Bid proposal teams got some good news and bad news from two recent court decisions involving the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The good news is that their line item prices, including their mark-ups, on winning bids will rarely be seen by competitors. The bad news is that bid teams…

Because government contractors are charged with knowing what an agency has published on FedBizOpps (www.fbo.gov), they need to closely monitor relevant procurement updates on that site. A recent GAO decision gave some helpful examples of contractor “ignorance being no excuse.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a solicitation for a…

Because major changes in the procurement laws are difficult for Congress to pass, incremental changes tend to be made yearly in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The 2019 NDAA is no exception. One of the most significant “incremental” changes made this year involves an agency’s use of the lowest…

Now that electronic signatures are becoming common-place, government contractors need to know what qualifies as a valid electronic signature in procurement. An offer that is not properly signed could easily show that the offeror did not intent to be bound by its offer and therefore could be rejected by a…

Contractors are often concerned that filing a pre-award protest might hurt their relationship with the government customer and, as a result, sometimes take a risk in responding to what they think is an unclear or unattainable solicitation requirement. A recent GAO decision serves as a reminder that contractors who fail…