Category Archives: GAO Bid Protests

GAO bid protest decisions, commentary on GAO bid protest regulations, and related topics.

Eagle Eye: Government May Slip a Sole-Source Award Past an Unaware Contractor

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Contractors would be wise to keep a close watch on FedBizOpps.gov, otherwise they run the risk missing the chance to protest a sole source award.

When an agency decides to make an award without competition, it often must publish a Justification and Approval (referred to simply as a “J&A”) on FedBizOpps explaining why a competition would not meet the agency’s needs. A potential competitor seeking to protest such an award at the GAO must file the protest before 10 days have passed from publication of the J&A, otherwise the protest may be untimely. A competitor that is not paying attention could be out of luck.

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Agency Creates Fake Source Selection Documents

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An agency has been caught creating fake source selection documents to pad its file in response to several GAO bid protests.

A recent GAO bid protest decision shows that, after award, the agency created new source selection documents and revised others, then pretended those documents had been part of the contemporaneous source selection file.  And although the agency’s conduct resulted in the cancellation of a major procurement, it’s not clear whether the agency employees who created the fake documents will face any punishment.

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Hiring Incumbent Employees At Low Labor Rates–What Could Go Wrong?

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A company bidding to replace an incumbent service contractor cannot presume incumbent workers will take major pay cuts without setting itself up for a potentially successful protest.

FAR 22.12 generally requires successor service contractors to give a right of first refusal to qualified employees under the previous contract. And even when these nondisplacement rules don’t apply, many offerors’ proposals tout their efforts to retain incumbent employees. But asking incumbent employees to take significant pay cuts–and expecting them to accept–is unreasonable and can torpedo a proposal. Case in point: GAO sustained a protest recently against an awardee who had proposed high retention rate of incumbent workers, but lower pay for those positions.

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Small Business Goaling: Army Evaluation Offers Lesson For SBA

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Last month, I wrote that the SBA shouldn’t have awarded the government an “A” for its FY 2016 small business goaling achievement.  Even though the government exceeded the 23% small business goal, it missed the WOSB and HUBZone goals (the latter by a lot).

In a different context, a recent U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposal evaluation offers a grading lesson for the SBA.  In that case, the Corps assigned a large prime offeror a middling “Acceptable” score for small business participation where the offeror proposed to meet the contract’s overall small business subcontracting goal, but not the SDB, WOSB, HUBZone, VOSB and SDVOSB goals.

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GAO: Late Is Late–Even If Agency Server Malfunctions

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You’ve hit send on that electronic proposal, hours before the deadline and now you can sit back and feel confident that you’ve done everything in your power – at least it won’t be rejected as untimely – right?

Not so fast. If an electronically submitted proposal gets delayed, the proposal may be rejected–even if the delay could have been caused by malfunctioning government equipment. In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO continued a recent pattern of ruling against protesters whose electronic proposals are delayed. And in this case, the GAO ruled against the protester even though the protester contended that an agency server malfunction had caused the delay.

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GAO: SBA’s Class Waiver Supported VA SDVOSB Set-Aside Decision

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Last month, Steve wrote about a new Class Deviation rule adopted by the VA that, in effect, would limit the VA’s use of class waivers as part of its decision to restrict competition to SDVOSBs (or otherwise issue solicitations as sole source awards). But in an apparent contradiction to this Class Deviation rule, GAO recently denied a challenge to an SDVOSB set-aside decision for a manufacturing solicitation, based in large part on SBA’s adoption of a class waiver for the particular NAICS code.

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“In Scope” vs. “Out of Scope” Modifications: GAO Explains The Difference

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An agency may modify a contract without running afoul of the Competition in Contracting Act, so long as the the modification is deemed “in scope.” An “out of scope” modification, on the other hand, is improper–and may be protested at GAO.

In a recent bid protest decision, GAO denied a protest challenging an agency’s modification of a contract where the modification was within scope and of a nature that competitors could have reasonably anticipated at the time of award. In its decision, GAO explained the difference between an in scope and out of scope modification, including the factors GAO will use to determine whether the modification is permissible.

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