GAO bid protest decisions, commentary on GAO bid protest regulations, and related topics.
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.
Despite older case law to the contrary, the GAO ordinarily lacks jurisdiction to decide a protest challenging the award of a subcontract, even where the subcontract is alleged to have been made “for” the government, as in the case of some subcontracts awarded by DOE Management and Operation prime contractors.
In a recent decision, the GAO confirmed that, except in very narrow circumstances, it won’t decide protests challenging subcontract awards.
When an agency solicits competitive proposals to establish multiple blanket purchase agreements, the agency may include “on-ramp” procedures to potentially award additional BPAs at a later date.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO confirmed that the FAR allows agencies to use on-ramp procedures to add additional BPAs–and that on-ramped BPA holders don’t enjoy an inherent unfair competitive advantage, at least not under the facts at issue.
A procurement may not be set aside for SDVOSB concerns without also including mandatory VA set-aside VAAR provisions, including the limitation on subcontracting.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that a solicitation was flawed where the cover sheet indicated that the solicitation would be set aside for SDVOSBs, but the solicitation omitted the mandatory VAAR SDVOSB set-aside clause.
When a contractor submits a sealed bid that includes a mistake, the contractor may be allowed to correct its bid, if there must be clear evidence of the error on the face of the bid.
According to a recent GAO decision, however, absent clear evidence, it is unreasonable for an agency to allow a bid correction.