Author Archives: Shane McCall

SmallGovCon Week in Review: December 9-13, 2024

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Hello and happy Friday! We’ve been getting some chilly temperatures here in the Midwest and it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. The lights are up downtown and the city is looking very festive! We hope you are enjoying the holiday season in your neck of the woods. We also finished up our last webinar of the season, the 2024 Government Contracting Year-End Review with Govology. Check it out to learn all the updates from 2024 to get ready for 2025.

This week in federal government contracting news saw updates on big picture contracting goals for DoD and software rules for federal contractors.

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SmallGovCon Week in Review: December 2-6, 2024

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Happy December! How’s the holiday shopping going so far? It seems the shopping time is even shorter than ever with Thanksgiving being so late this year. Oh boy! And the calendar is busy with so many events happening in December, it’s difficult to choose. This Saturday is the 24th annual Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade here in Lawrence, Kansas, featuring horse drawn buggies. We also hope you have some fun holiday plans this weekend and try not to stress about that shopping list.

But the federal contracting world was busy as well and has not quite settled down for its slumber. This week in federal government contracting news saw new WOSB rules, claim appeal stats from the CBCA annual report, and updates from the new administration.

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Govology Webinar: December 12, 2024 – The 2024 Government Contracting Year-End Review

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Please join Nicole Pottroff and me for this informative webinar, where we will discuss important new small business rules and updates, changes to 8(a) Program certification, joint venture modifications, HUBZone certification updates (including the new extensive HUBZone proposed rule), key provisions of the most recent National Defense Authorization Act, recent cases relevant to federal contractors, and more.

This is always a great way to end the calendar year in federal contracting. Register here. Hope to see you there!

We are Thankful for You, SmallGovCon Readers!

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On behalf of our attorney-authors and administrators at SmallGovCon, we wanted to take this opportunity to express our gratitude for all of our loyal blog readers. We love that SmallGovCon is such a widespread resource for contractors, federal agencies and employees, counselors, and others in the federal contracting space. We appreciate all of you for making this platform possible–and for offering us invaluable insight into the questions industry is really asking. Much of our content is driven by you all, our readers. So, keep sending us your inquiries and your feedback. And we will keep working to make SmallGovCon a useful tool for those in the government contracting world for many years to come.

We hope you have a wonderful holiday, and of course, extra long weekend, enjoying valuable time with family and friends. And if it applies, safe travels! Thank you so much!

2024 GAO Bid Protest Report: Numbers Down, Effectiveness Still Even Odds

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As we look forward to fall traditions like turkey and mashed potatoes, pumpkin spice, and leaf peeping, don’t sleep on another fall tradition, the GAO bid protest report. This report is GAO’s summary of bid protests for the previous fiscal year. It contains some important insights for how GAO bid protest numbers have changed from prior years. Of course, many bid protests are filed at the Court of Federal Claims, so this is only one part of the picture.

Here are some key points from this year: (1) the key effectiveness metric, showing numbers of sustains and corrective actions at GAO, was similar to prior years at 52% for the 2024 fiscal year and (2) total bid protest numbers were down slightly from 2023 but a little above the number for 2022. Numbers are still lower than in 2021 and 2020.

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SmallGovCon Week in Review: November 18-22, 2024

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Happy Friday, SmallGovCon readers and have a great Thanksgiving next week! We won’t be posting our weekly roundup next week due to the holiday, but we’ll catch up on any missed news the following week.

In the meantime, enjoy this week’s federal contracting news. Also be sure to enjoy the family, friends, and food at your Thanksgiving table and maybe catch a football game. We will be back, with another edition of the week in review, in December. Some of the key stories this week including an update on small business past performance evaluation for affiliates, and updates on GAO bid protest stats.

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Webinar event: The SBA and DoD Mentor-Protégé Programs, December 3, 2024, hosted by Kansas APEX Accelerators

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Please join us on December 3, 2024, 9:30-11:30am CST for this webinar event. Touted as a game-changer when it was first introduced in 2016, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s All Small Mentor-Protege Program isn’t new anymore. Known now as simply the SBA Mentor-Protege Program, it is still extremely useful for large and small contractors alike.

Government contracts attorney Gregory Weber and Annie Birney of Koprince McCall Pottroff LLC will explain the ins and outs of the SBA Mentor-Protege Program, covering the program’s eligibility requirements, its potential benefits (including the ability to form special mentor-protege joint ventures), the application process, and common misconceptions and pitfalls. Additionally, Gregory and Annie will provide an introduction to the even older DoD Mentor-Protege Program, which set the stage for the SBA’s program, and compare the two programs. Register here.