Government Contracts

In the rush to get a proposal finalized and submitted to the government on time, it’s understandable that offerors cannot always labor over every word in every sentence. Unfortunately, attention to detail is critical. Recently, an offeror’s failure to write its technical proposal to clearly give itself credit for previous…

The suspension of a long-time government contractor following a security breach shows that the government intends to use the suspension/debarment process to investigate and perhaps punish contractors for cyber security failures. According to limited information in the Government’s System for Award Management (SAM), Perceptics, LLC was declared “Ineligible (Proceedings Pending)”…

Even though past performance evaluations play a critical role in a contractor getting future contracts, contractors rarely challenge bad past performance ratings or the improper way an agency carries out its required past performance evaluation responsibilities described in FAR Subpart 42.15. One of the most common agency errors seems to…

A common contractor complaint is that the government rarely does things differently – that there is little, if any, initiative, in government contracting. Surprisingly, according to a little-known provision of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), innovation in government contracting is FAR policy. Even more surprising, perhaps, is that FAR gives…

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…