Government Contracts

Bidders don’t often consider that information they learn through discussions could trigger the need to file a pre-award protest, even when that information is not included in a solicitation amendment. If an agency communication conflicts with the solicitation’s terms, a bidder must protest this ambiguity before closing time for proposals.

With security clearances being such an important requirement of winning a Defense Department contract, contractors need to know some unique protest rules dealing with a contracting officer’s “responsibility” determinations. An Army solicitation required the winning contractor’s employees to “have and maintain a current SECRET clearance prior to and during employment,”…

GAO recently dismissed an unsuccessful bidder’s protest, finding that the protestor had effectively abandoned its protest when it failed to provide a substantive response to the agency’s report. Yang Enterprises, Inc. protested the award of an Air Force contract for launch operations and infrastructure support at Cape Canaveral, Florida to…

When your proposal submission deadline is looming, you might be tempted to save time by not reading parts of the RFP, like provisions incorporated by reference. That’s always a bad idea as we can see from a recent protest decision of the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The United States Secret…

Identifying “good” references on past government work is key to getting future work. Especially critical is the almost impossible job of confirming with those references that they actually will give the government that good reference. A recent GAO decision highlights the importance of confirming that a past performance reference will…

The federal government failed to pass a spending bill Friday night, resulting in a government shutdown. Here, we summarize five things contractors should consider when faced with a government shutdown. Contractors Must Continue Work until Directed to Stop. Implementation of the government shutdown is decentralized and not every agency, activity,…

There has been much talk in recent years about a supposed increase in “frivolous” bid protests. In the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, Congress instructed the Department of Defense to conduct an independent study of the bid protest process in DoD procurements. The RAND Corporation recently published…

A recent GAO decision highlights the fundamental procurement principle that agencies must evaluate proposals consistent with the terms of the solicitation. In AdvanceMed Corporation, the protestor argued that the awardee, Safeguard Services, LLC, was ineligible for award of a task order because its parent company had an organizational conflict of…

Even though the options of long-term IDIQ contracts help a small business to grow, and perhaps even outgrow, their small business size, a competitor’s right to challenge the size status of a no-longer-small-business at the SBA is very limited. A recent decision of the SBA’s Office of Hearings and Appeals…