A Pre-Award Protest Probably Isn’t the Place to Raise Suspicions of Wage Violations

Posted on September 21, 2018 by SmallGovConContributor

Let’s suppose you’re a contractor that provides services to the federal government. Typically, your contract will require you to pay your employees the prevailing wage rates promulgated under the Service Contract Act.

What if you suspect that, under previous contracts, your competitors failed to pay their employees the mandated prevailing rates? Can you use a pre-award bid protest to obligate a procuring agency to police possible ongoing non-compliance through solicitation provisions? If you say yes, perhaps you should keep reading.

SmallGovCon Week in Review: September 17-21, 2018

Posted on September 21, 2018 by SmallGovConContributor

It’s time for the best part of the week: the SmallGovCon Week in Review!

In this week’s edition, the Deputy Secretary of Defense discusses the importance of cybersecurity in DoD procurements, a California company was ordered to pay back wages under the Service Contract Act, upcoming changes to startup contracts with the Air Force, and much more.

Have a great weekend!

Court of Federal Claims Rejects Unsupported Decision to Cancel Solicitation

Posted on September 18, 2018 by SmallGovConContributor

An agency ordinarily enjoys very broad discretion in its procurement-related decisions. This includes whether an agency will award a contract or, instead, cancel a procurement.

Broad as this discretion is, however, an agency does not have carte blanche to cancel a procurement on a whim. As a recent Court of Federal Claims decision shows, an agency must support its decision with sufficient information, lest the cancellation decision itself be successfully protested.

New Rule Changes Bring CBCA Procedures Into the Efiling Age

Posted on September 17, 2018 by SmallGovConContributor

On August 17, 2018, the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals (CBCA) issued new procedural rules which go into effect Monday, September 17, 2018. The substantial overhaul of the former rules intends to bring the CBCA into the 21^st century by emphasizing, adding, and clarifying rules about electronic filing.

SmallGovCon Week in Review: September 10-14, 2018

Posted on September 14, 2018 by SmallGovConContributor

Another week has flown by, which means that it’s time for the SmallGovCon Week in Review. In this week’s edition, we’ll take a look at Uncle Sam’s “cloud spending splurge,” a new GSA bid on a vendor verification system, frustrations with the VA’s verification process, the looming year-end spending binge, and more.

Have a great weekend!

Where Non-Price Ratings Identical, Agency Wasn’t Required to Choose Lower-Priced Offeror

Posted on September 12, 2018 by Steven Koprince

In a best value competition, when two offerors receive identical adjectival scores on the non-price factors, one might assume that the procuring agency would be required to award the contract to the lower-priced offeror.

Not so. In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that where two offerors received identical scores on three non-price factors, the agency could still elect to award the contract to the higher-priced offeror.

SBA OIG Recommends Improved Oversight of 8(a) Continuing Eligibility

Posted on September 12, 2018 by SmallGovConContributor

Last year, we wrote about the SBA’s Office of Inspector General’s concerns with the SBA’s review of potential 8(a) participants’ eligibility. In this report, the OIG made three recommendations aimed at improving to verify applicants’ eligibility.

Just last week, the OIG released a new report analyzing the 8(a) Program. This report picks up where the earlier report left off—it addressed several issues in the SBA’s evaluation of participants’ continuing eligibility.

The results of this report are rather alarming: based on its review, the OIG identified almost $127 million in 8(a) set-aside awards to ineligible firms.