Government Contracts

When submitting proposal information to the government, an offeror needs to know that not all deadlines are the same. For example, the deadline for submitting technical information is typically the deadline for submission of initial offers. However, the deadline for submitting responsibility information can be much later in the solicitation…

A recent decision from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims reminds protestors that it is not enough to establish agency error, but that the protestor must also be able to demonstrate that it was prejudiced by that error. In this protest of the Encore III small business contract awards, the…

A recent decision of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows that incumbent contractors bidding on a follow-on contract cannot assume that the government’s evaluators will use their personal knowledge of an incumbent’s previous performance and automatically fill in informational blanks an incumbent might leave in its follow-on proposal. Although evaluators…

Because it usually makes sense to not start a new contract or task order until after any protests over that award have been resolved, protesters at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have the right to an “automatic stay” of performance of the protested award if they file their…

Although the complexity of the solicitation process makes it easy for “things to fall between the cracks,” the solicitation process has little room for error. Recently, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that an offeror who had failed to respond to an agency request to extend its proposal was reasonably…

The Federal Acquisition Regulation (“FAR”) requires that most contracts with the federal government include a clause mandating that the contractor have a written code of business ethics and conduct, and that it conducts periodic reviews to ensure the effectiveness of that code in rooting out fraud and corruption…

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…