Author Archives: SmallGovCon Contributor

Claim Under VA FSS Task Order Should Have Gone To GSA

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It’s a well-known aspect of federal contracting: if a contractor wishes to formally dispute a matter of contract performance, the contractor should file a claim with the contracting officer.

But if the contractor is working under a task or delivery order, which contracting officer should be on the receiving end of that claim—the one responsible for the order, or the one responsible for the underlying contract?

As a recent Civilian Board of Contract Appeals decision demonstrates, when a contractor is performing work under a Federal Supply Schedule order, a claim involving the terms of the underlying Schedule contract must be filed with the GSA contracting officer.

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GAO Report Highlights Recent Trends In Government Contracting

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Earlier this month, the GAO  released a comprehensive report detailing the trends in government contracting over a five-year period (from fiscal year 2011 through 2015). The entire report is available here. If you have a few hours to spare, it’s worth a read; if not, this post will summarize a few of its most eye-catching nuggets.

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GAO: Use Of CPARs Must Be Equal

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Resolving a protest challenging a past performance evaluation, GAO is deferential to the agency’s determinations. It is primarily concerned with whether the evaluation was conducted fairly and in accordance with the solicitation’s evaluation criteria; if so, GAO will not second-guess the agency’s assessment of the relevance or merit of an offeror’s performance history.

For protesters, therefore, challenging an agency’s past performance evaluation can be difficult. But a recent decision makes clear this task is not impossible—GAO will sustain a protest challenging a past performance evaluation if the agency treats offerors differently or unfairly, such as by more broadly reviewing the awardee’s CPARs than the CPARs of the protester.

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Agency’s Discretion Over Solicitation’s Technical Specifications Isn’t Unlimited

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A major tenet in government contracting is that agencies enjoy broad discretion in identifying their needs and developing the most appropriate solicitation to satisfy them. Though broad, this discretion is not unlimited. If challenged, an agency must demonstrate that its specifications are reasonably necessary to meet its needs and are not unduly restrictive of competition.

GAO recently affirmed this principle in Pitney Bowes, Inc., B-413876.2 (Feb. 13, 2017), when it sustained a protest challenging a solicitation’s requirements as being unduly restrictive of competition.

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GAO: Failure To Explain Prejudice Doomed Otherwise Successful Protest

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Imagine that you’re a manufacturer of appliances, and respond to a solicitation seeking one of your appliances (on a brand name basis). You, of course, propose to provide your appliance. But you lose out on an award to an offeror that submits an offer for a different appliance that admittedly does not comply with the solicitation’s minimum requirements.

In this situation, you’d probably be fairly upset. And as a recent GAO decision acknowledged, you’d likely have a successful basis of protest—that is, if you could establish that you were prejudiced by the government’s award decision, and if you understood what exactly the GAO means by “prejudice.”

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SBA OHA: Foreign Subsidiary Was “Small Business”

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When many people think of small business federal contractors, they probably picture a local business and not a subsidiary of a foreign entity. But this image isn’t always accurate—small business federal contractors don’t often neatly fit in the mold of local, mom-and-pop shops.

The SBA’s small business regulations confirm this to be true. Indeed, to qualify as a small business for most federal contracting purposes, a company can be a subsidiary of a foreign firm—so long as certain criteria are met. This point was recently affirmed by the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals, when it found that a domestic affiliate of an international conglomerate qualified as a small business.

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GAO Reaffirms Agencies’ Broad Discretion to (Not) Consider Price Realism for Fixed-Price Contracts

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We are quickly approaching our 1000th blog post on the SmallGovCon blog. To celebrate we want to reward one lucky reader with a free one hour custom webinar for up to 50 people presented by Steven Koprince on the government contracting topic of your choice! You can enter by using the hashtag #SGC1000 on Twitter or Facebook just by telling us why you read the blog or what you love most about. You can also simply fill out this form to be entered. Good Luck!

As a general rule, an agency is only required to evaluate a fixed-price offer for reasonableness (that is, whether the price is too high). Agencies are not required to evaluate fixed-price offers for realism (that is, whether the price is too low) and, in fact, cannot do so unless the solicitation advises offerors that a realism evaluation will be conducted.

GAO recently reaffirmed this principle when it denied a protest challenging an agency’s refusal to consider the realism of offerors’ fixed prices as part of a corrective action, even though the agency suspected that at least one offeror’s price was unrealistically low.

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