Happy Friday! Before we sign out for the weekend, let’s take a look at the government contracting highlights for the past week.
In this edition of SmallGovCon Week in Review, we’ll check in with our friend Guy Timberlake for the latest on GSA FSS spending, consider GAO’s recommendations for DOD award time frames, look at NASA’s increases in small business spending, and more.
Have a great weekend!
When it comes to timely filing a bid protest, government contractors should keep one overriding principle in mind: late is late, and it probably won’t matter why the protest wasn’t timely received.
GAO recently reaffirmed this principle when it dismissed a bid protest that wasn’t timely received by its new, mandatory Electronic Protest Docketing System.
When an agency reevaluates proposals in response to a protest, the reevaluation must be thorough and reasonable.
In a recent GAO bid protest decision, GAO sustained a protest because the agency’s reevaluation of proposals, undertaken after a protest was sustained, did not reasonably address “widespread discrepancies” in the awardee’s proposal.
It’s Friday, which means it’s time for the SmallGovCon Week in Review. This week’s edition includes a look at federal spending on 8(a) contracts, GAO’s response to a discussion about a much-publicized OTA decision, and the SBA’s new effort to modernize its IT systems. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get to it!
Have a great weekend!
Thinking about hiring an employee of the incumbent contractor for your next bid? If so, make sure to protect yourself from disqualification based on an organizational conflict of interest.
In a recent bid protest by Archimedes’ Global, Inc., the GAO reversed the Government’s decision to exclude Archimedes from consideration for a bid when an alleged OCI was based on mere innuendo and supposition instead of hard facts supported by the record.
While the SBA’s Office of Hearings and Appeals hears appeals for many of the SBA’s programs, there are certain decisions that remain outside of its purview.
As one protester was surprised to learn, among those items outside of OHA’s jurisdiction are appeals of the HUBZone status determinations.
When an incumbent contractor’s general manager got sick and had to quit, the contractor promptly found a replacement, which the agency approved. But there was still one problem: the incumbent had already proposed to use the same general manager for the next contract.
According to GAO, the agency was right to eliminate the contractor from the competition, even though the agency knew that the contractor had a new general manager and had, in fact, approved the replacement.