Includes decisions of the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals, including size appeal decisions, service-disabled veteran-owned small business appeal decisions, NAICS code appeal decisions, and women-owned small business appeal decisions.
Now here’s one you don’t see every day. In a recent size appeal decision, the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals upheld the SBA’s determination that the contractor was affiliated with the government of Puerto Rico.
In Size Appeal of Industria Lechera de Puerto Rico, Inc., SBA No. SIZ-5533 (2014), SBA OHA held that the contractor’s relationship with the Puerto Rican government rendered the contractor, in essence, a quasi-governmental entity, not an independent small business.
The SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals does not have jurisdiction to review a contracting officer’s decision not to set aside a procurement for small business.
In a recent decision, SBA OHA dismissed a contractor’s contention that the procuring agency should have set aside a procurement for small business–and rejected the contractor’s underlying legal argument, as well.
Submitting a proposal for a GSA Schedule task order does not result in an automatic recertification of the offeror’s size.
In a recent size appeal decision, the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals rejected the argument that an offeror recertifies its size merely by submitting a proposal for a GSA task order. Instead, a firm’s size for purposes of a GSA Schedule task order competition is determined based on the underlying GSA Schedule contract, unless the procuring agency requires recertification for the task order.
A prime contractor was not economically dependent on its subcontractor for purposes of the SBA affiliation rules because a prime contractor “has the power to choose whatever subcontractor it desires.”
In a recent size appeal decision, the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals stopped short of holding that a prime contractor could never be economically dependent on a subcontractor, but SBA OHA’s decision indicates that if such dependence ever existed, it would be in an unusual case.
Contracting Officers are not required to assist potential protesters by furnishing them with information to use in SBA size protests.
According to a recent size appeal decision of the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals, the SBA properly dismissed a size protest for lack of support, notwithstanding the protester’s allegation that the Contracting Officer had failed to provide information needed to support the size protest.
A firm’s small business size status for federal procurements is measured by the firm’s revenues, not by its profits.
As the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals explained in a recent size determination, measuring small business status by reference to profits would allow some very large companies to qualify as “small.”
An unsuccessful offeror’s email to the Contracting Officer, in which the offeror expressed “concerns” about the awardee’s small business size status, was too vague to constitute an SBA size protest.
According to a recent decision of the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals, a viable size protest must be explicit enough to alert the Contracting Officer that the offeror is protesting the awardee’s size.