Last week, we wrote about OMB’s guidance to contracting officers in dealing with the extraordinary challenges caused by COVID-19. Among other things, OMB instructed agencies to be flexible in providing extensions on performance deadline and encouraged open communication with industry partners on the response to COVID-19.
Now, the Department of Defense—the federal government’s largest purchasing unit—has issued its own guidance to constituent agencies.
Continue readingMuch like schoolyard basketball, bid protests feature a “no harm, no foul” rule: unless an offeror can credibly allege that it was prejudiced by a flawed evaluation, GAO won’t sustain a protest.
Establishing prejudice can be tricky, depending on the type of evaluation at issue. Under a lowest-price technically acceptable award, a protester generally must show that it was next-in-line for the award (that is, it was technically acceptable and had the next-lowest price, after the awardee). Best value awards, on the other hand, are a bit more flexible: usually, the protester must establish that the evaluation flaw adversely affected its competitive standing.
A recent GAO decision, however, highlights that these two means of establishing prejudice aren’t always distinct.
Continue readingIt’s Friday, which means it’s time for the SmallGovCon Week In Review. In this edition, we’ll look at a potential impact to the change to DUNS numbers, cybersecurity requirements, and increased opportunities with the Corps of Engineers.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Continue readingPast performance is an important evaluation factor in many solicitations. Essentially, it allows an agency to guess as to the likelihood of an offeror’s successful performance under a solicitation by looking to its history of performance on similar projects in the past.
GAO recently confirmed it is “axiomatic” that past performance examples should align with the solicitation’s requirements. If an offeror submits unrelated examples, it risks a downgraded past performance score.
Continue readingThis afternoon, news broke that Linda McMahon, the SBA’s Administrator, is expected to resign.
Continue readingHappy end of FY 2018, everybody! Let’s celebrate properly, with the SmallGovCon Week In Review.
In this week’s edition, we’ll discuss end-of-fiscal-year spending (appropriately enough), new FAR regulations, and government contracting officials behaving badly.
Have a great weekend!
Happy Friday! We hope your August is off to a great start. Before we head out for the weekend, let’s review the week that was in government contracting.
In this week’s edition of SmallGovCon Week In Review, we’ll consider federal contract procurement reforms, USDA modernization efforts, and more.
Have a great weekend!