A contractor’s request that the agency issue a “no-cost” cancellation of its contract was not a default–and did not justify the government’s default termination of the contract.
In a recent decision, the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals held that a contractor did not repudiate its contract by requesting a cancellation because the contractor’s request was not a “positive, definite, unconditional, and unequivocal refusal to perform.”
When an agency orders goods or services using the GSA Schedule, the ordered items generally must be on the awardee’s Schedule contract as of the date of the order–but need not be on the Schedule contract at an earlier date.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that an agency had properly awarded a GSA Schedule order even though the awardee did not have the ordered services on its Schedule contract at the time of its offer, because the awardee’s GSA Schedule contract was modified to include those services by the date of the order.
I am back in Kansas after a great trip to Salt Lake City, where I spoke at the 10th Annual PTAC Procurement Symposium. My presentation covered important new developments in government contracting, including the SBA’s proposed new “universal” mentor-protege program, the new WOSB sole source authority, and more.
Many thanks to Fred Lange, Chuck Spence, and their team at the Utah PTAC for inviting me to speak. Thanks also to all of those who attended the conference and made this such a great event.
I will be here in Lawrence for a few weeks, and then it is on to Washington, DC, where I will be sitting in on Supreme Court oral arguments in the Kingdomware SDVOSB/VOSB case and speaking on Kingdomware and other timely government contracting topics at the APTAC Fall Conference.
According to the GAO, a business qualifies as small for purposes of a task order competition under a Governmentwide Acquisition Contract so long as the business was small for purposes of the underlying GWAC, and the Contracting Officer does not request size recertification in connection with the task order. And even if recertification is required for the task order, the operative date to determine small business status is the date of the task order offer–not the date the task order is awarded.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO and SBA both weighed in on the question of small business size status for task order competitions, providing some helpful clarity on this often-confusing topic.
Another week is almost over, and that means it’s time to bring you the SmallGovCon Week In Review. This week we look at GSA’s IT consolidation efforts, a bid-rigging scheme that resulted in a seven-year prison sentence, allegations of SDVOSB fraud, and much more.
In a recent GAO review of three agencies’ use of bridge contracts, the agencies in question had “limited or no insight into their use of bridge contracts.”
According to a recent GAO report, a lack of effective guidance for the use of bridge contracts contributed to potential misuse–such as several so-called “bridge” contracts that were longer than three years in duration.
Can an offeror be awarded a fixed-price contract with a winning bid of $0.00? Under the right circumstances, the answer is “yes,” as demonstrated in a recent GAO bid protest decision.
Last week, I joined Francis Rose to discuss the “zero dollar winning bidder,” as well as a troubling case in which an agency’s evaluation of proposals was upheld, even though the source selection authority used a “cut and paste” template from a different evaluation.
Click here to listen to my full interview, and be sure to check out In Depth With Francis Rose weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Eastern, on 1500 AM in the Washington, D.C. metro area and online everywhere.