GAO bid protest decisions, commentary on GAO bid protest regulations, and related topics.
An agency cannot buy “Open Market” items from a Federal Supply Schedule vendor when the same items are readily available under another vendor’s FSS contract–even if the vendor selling Open Market items offers them as a discounted bundle and the FSS vendor does not.
In a recent decision, GAO held that it was improper for an agency to buy bundled software packages as Open Market items when another vendor sold the same licenses on its FSS contract as four separate items.
Contrary to a common misconception, an offeror is not automatically entitled to “use” the past performance of parent companies, sister companies or other corporate affiliates. So when can an offeror rely on the past performance of an affiliate in submitting a proposal?
A recent GAO opinion sheds some light on that question. Not meeting the GAO’s guidelines for describing the detailed involvement of the affiliate can have a harsh result—a sustained protest if award was made based on the affiliate’s past performance.
We’ve been following GAO’s plan to implement its Electronic Protest Docketing System (“EPDS”) with great interest. In fact, we’ve had the opportunity to test-drive the new system (tl/dr: it’s a very user-friendly system, but there are a couple of minor improvements that would make it even better).
Just yesterday, GAO released a final rule implementing EPDS. Here are the most important takeaways.
SmallGovCon readers may recall that, in 2016, the Government Accountability Office proposed an electronic filing system for bid protests. GAO released a pilot version of its new system earlier this year, and Koprince Law LLC has had the opportunity to test it on several occasions through our bid protest work.
Here are some first impressions on GAO’s Electronic Protest Docketing System.
A CIO-SP3 SB contract holder could not protest the award of a task order to a competitor because the order was valued at less than $10 million.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO confirmed that civilian task order awards–including those under CIO-SP3 SB–generally cannot be protested unless the value of the order exceeds $10 million.
An agency was not required to evaluate past performance under an SDVOSB set-aside solicitation that contemplated making award to the lowest-price, technically-acceptable offeror.
According to a recent GAO bid protest decision, a past performance evaluation in the context of an LPTA set-aside is essentially duplicative of the agency’s evaluation of responsibility, meaning that a separate past performance evaluation isn’t necessary.
Under the FAR, unbalanced pricing may increase performance risk and can result in the government paying unreasonably high prices. But the concept of unbalanced pricing is often misunderstood in practice.
As the GAO wrote in a recent bid protest decision, unbalanced pricing doesn’t exist merely because some of an offeror’s line item prices are low. Rather, unbalanced pricing requires both understated and overstated line items–that is, some line items appear too high while others appear too low.