GAO bid protest decisions, commentary on GAO bid protest regulations, and related topics.
The GAO has suspended a protester for “abusive litigation practices,” for the second time.
Last year, the GAO suspended Latvian Connection LLC from participating in the GAO bid protest process for one year, after the firm filed 150 protests in the course of a single fiscal year. Now, citing “derogatory and abusive allegations,” among many other concerns, the GAO has re-imposed its suspension–this time, for two years.
When an agency requests that offerors provide past performance references, the agency ordinarily is not precluded from considering outside past performance information.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO confirmed that an agency’s past performance evaluation may include information outside the past performance references submitted by the offeror–and the agency can use any negative past performance information to downgrade the offeror’s score.
GAO bid protests succeeded almost half the time in Fiscal Year 2017.
According to the GAO’s latest Bid Protest Annual Report, the effectiveness rate of GAO bid protests was 47% in the recently-completed fiscal year. The statistics are striking, because they come just as Congress is finalizing the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes measures aimed at reducing bid protests. But with bid protests succeeding at a nearly 50% clip, why does the protest “reform” debate seem to center almost entirely on discouraging contractors to protest, rather than on decreasing the number of flawed source selection evaluations?
As a branch of the Treasury Department, the United States Mint would usually be subject to federal procurement laws, like bid protests. As one contractor recently discovered, however, certain activities at the Mint have been exempted from many federal procurement laws, including GAO protest review.
Simply put, the GAO can’t decide a bid protest of Mint procurements.
When an agency opens discussions with offerors, those discussions must be fair.
In a recent decision, GAO recommended the reopening of competition for a contract worth up to $283 million based, in part, on a finding that an agency had engaged in misleading and unequal discussions.
Asking new employees to sign arbitration agreements is common in the commercial business world. But it can be a big no-no in government contracting.
In a recent bid protest decision, GAO sustained a protest where a Reston, Virginia company required its proposed key personnel to sign binding arbitration agreements. In other words, requiring key personnel to arbitrate employment disputes cost the original awardee a $41 million contract.
It’s a Sunday afternoon and instead of watching football, you’re shopping for a new refrigerator. You explain to the salesman your must-haves: a black refrigerator with a bottom-drawer freezer and an in-door water dispenser. But rather than showing you refrigerators that meet your criteria, he insists on showing you stainless steel models with the freezer on the side.
If the refrigerator doesn’t meet your needs (or your wants), odds are you won’t buy it. The federal government is no different: if it identifies salient characteristics in a solicitation, proposals that deviate from them likely aren’t going to win the award.