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.
A participant in the SBA’s 8(a) Program was appropriately terminated because the company’s disadvantaged owner took another full-time job without the SBA’s permission.
The recent SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals decision upholding the termination is an important reminder of the limitations on outside employment for 8(a) owners–as well as a reminder of the importance to 8(a) firms of ongoing honesty and forthrightness with the SBA.
A SDVOSB joint venture was not eligible for award of a SDVOB set-aside contract because its joint venture agreement called for certain decisions to be made by supermajority vote.
As explained by the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals in its decision finding the SDVOSB joint venture ineligible, the supermajority provision undermined the regulatory requirement that a SDVOSB joint venture be managed by an eligible SDVOSB.
A contractor’s NAICS code appeal was dismissed as untimely, even though it was filed within the time frame expressly established in an SBA regulation.
In a recent decision, the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals confirmed its earlier ruling that a NAICS code appeal must be filed within ten calendar days, despite an SBA regulation establishing a filing deadline of ten business days.
SBA OHA’s decision isn’t surprising in light of its prior ruling. However, in my mind, the decision raises a question of fundamental fairness: should protesters continue to be penalized for the SBA’s failure to fix its conflicting timeliness regulations?
The SBA misevaluated a joint venture by basing its ineligibility decision on the joint venture’s revenues, rather than determining whether each joint venturer, individually, qualified as a small business, according to a recent decision of the SBA’s Office of Hearings and Appeals.
SBA OHA’s decision highlights what I like to call the “individual size treatment rule,” a special regulation requiring the SBA to deem a joint venture “small” under certain circumstances, even when the combined sizes of the joint venture’s members exceed the applicable size standard.
When designating the NAICS code for a solicitation, the procuring agency should not consider which NAICS code will help increase competition and decrease the risks of unsuccessful performance.
According to a recent decision of the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals, these factors should play no bearing on an agency’s NAICS code designation. Instead, in most cases, the agency must select the NAICS code that best describes the principal purpose of the product or service being acquired.
A Contracting Officer must designate the NAICS code which best describes the principal purpose of the product or service being acquired, right?
Not always. As demonstrated in a recent SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals decision, when it comes to picking a NAICS code for a GSA Schedule task order, a Contracting Officer’s choices can be quite limited–and the “best” NAICS code might not be chosen.
A contractor was recently terminated from the SBA’s 8(a) Program for failing to comply with the subcontracting limits applicable to its 8(a) contracts.
The SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals upheld the termination, writing that the SBA had properly terminated the 8(a) contractor for “willfully violating SBA regulations.” SBA OHA rejected the contractor’s argument that it was exempt from the subcontracting limits under the so-called non-manufacturer rule.