Contractors interested in acquiring participants in the SBA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program beware: successfully novating SBIR contracts has been made significantly harder by a recent GAO decision.
Worse still, SBIR novation mistakes can jeopardize future awards under the SBIR contract vehicles. Tread lightly.
Continue reading…The SBA recently issued a final rule concerning numerous aspects of small business contracting. In previous posts, we wrote about a few parts of the rule, including changes to the limitations on subcontracting.
The new rule also clarifies some important facets of the rules governing subcontracting plans.
Continue reading…Hope everyone had a great holiday season! Now it’s time to get back to the routine. And for those of us in the northern parts of the county–a few more months to walk in a winter wonderland.
To avoid that post-holiday letdown, enjoy some of these federal contracting updates that have been rolling in since my last update. This week, there are interesting stories including the new SBA administrator being confirmed, Space Force seeking innovative tech solutions, and calls for federal purchasing to change more quickly.
Continue reading…As I’m sure most other attorneys can commiserate with, I often have a recurring nightmare that I miss a filing deadline. Doing so can lead to terrible results: dismissed cases and, in some cases, sanctions against the attorney. For this reason, we always check, double-check, and triple-check our filing deadlines, and strive to file documents early, when possible.
Given my fear, I gain no pleasure in reading about missed filing deadlines, especially when the goof is the subject of a matter outside the attorney’s control.
But as a recent decision by the SBA’s Office of Hearings and Appeals demonstrates, even the most sympathetic of excuses won’t excuse a late appeal filing.
Continue reading…By 2020, most of us have gotten used to almost immediate means of digital communication. We expect emails to reach their destination at lightning-fast speeds—but this isn’t always the case.
Relying on this expectation can have devastating effects, as it did for a protester in one recent GAO case.
Continue reading…It’s generally a pretty high bar to argue the ol’ “bait and switch” concerning what personnel will actually perform a contract. But specifically naming a crucial employee of the incumbent in your proposal—without ever talking to that employee about working on the new contract—can meet the bar in a GAO protest.
Continue reading…Wouldn’t it be swell to simply erase those less-than-flattering moments from your past merely by deleting them? For instance, what if your biographer simply omitted any mention of you being excited for and seeing the apparently horrible new Cats movie?
Does erasing a historical fact–such as an unfavorable detail from a proposal–mean that it never happened?
Continue reading…