Author Archives: Shane McCall

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.

SmallGovCon Week in Review: November 11-15, 2024

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Happy Friday! We hope you had a great week and are looking forward to the weekend. We have had some beautiful Fall weather here in the Midwest and finally received some much needed rain. It’s hard to believe the holidays are right around the corner!

Please visit SmallGovCon often for updates on the latest information in federal government contracting matters. We truly appreciate our readers and always strive to provide helpful content. Have a great weekend!

This week in federal government contracting news included updates on what the new administration could mean for federal contracting and some great strides for small businesses such as how SBA helps all types of small businesses.

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Dialing Down: SAM Registration Not Constantly Required

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As we’ve written about on the blog, protests have been decided because the offeror was not registered in SAM for the entirety of the proposal review process period. For instance, in this post, we discussed a GAO decision where GAO held that the FAR requires offerors to maintain SAM registration throughout the evaluation period, meaning from proposal submission to award of the contract. A COFC case came to the same conclusion. Well, the federal government didn’t like the result and has published an interim rule to remedy it.

In a recent interim rule effective November 12, 2024, the FAR is being updated to clarify that “the offeror must be registered at time of offer submission and at time of contract award, but would not be required to be registered at every moment in between those two points.”

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