Asking new employees to sign arbitration agreements is common in the commercial business world. But it can be a big no-no in government contracting.
In a recent bid protest decision, GAO sustained a protest where a Reston, Virginia company required its proposed key personnel to sign binding arbitration agreements. In other words, requiring key personnel to arbitrate employment disputes cost the original awardee a $41 million contract.
When a contractor leases equipment to the government, the contractor typically expects that the government will take good care of that equipment. But a recent Armed Services Board of Contracts Appeals case reveals the government does not always take such proper care of leased goods or equipment.
What happens then? Well, the contractor may be able to recover damages under the contract and common law principles.
Editor’s Note: You can find our updated post on Affiliation here.
Affiliation might be one of the scariest words to small business government contractors. But why?
Here are five things you should know about affiliation:
I am back in Lawrence after a great trip to Washington, DC where I attended the Native American Contractors Association 2017 Federal Contracting Policy and Advocacy Conference. I was part of a great panel yesterday on the future of federal contracting. The panel spoke about GAO bid protests, the move away from lowest-price technically-acceptable procurements, the need to improve the HUBZone program, and other important topics facing the contracting community in the years to come.
A huge “thank you” to Mike Anderson, Chelsea Fish, and the entire NACA leadership team for organizing this fantastic event and inviting me to participate. And a big thanks also to everyone who attended the panel and stopped by the Koprince Law LLC booth. It was wonderful to see so many old friends and make plenty of new ones.
Next on my travel agenda: the National Veterans Small Business Engagement. If you will be attending the NVSBE, I look forward to seeing you in St. Louis.
It’s a Sunday afternoon and instead of watching football, you’re shopping for a new refrigerator. You explain to the salesman your must-haves: a black refrigerator with a bottom-drawer freezer and an in-door water dispenser. But rather than showing you refrigerators that meet your criteria, he insists on showing you stainless steel models with the freezer on the side.
If the refrigerator doesn’t meet your needs (or your wants), odds are you won’t buy it. The federal government is no different: if it identifies salient characteristics in a solicitation, proposals that deviate from them likely aren’t going to win the award.
Although the temperatures outside may be dropping, things are heating up in the contracting world. Now one month into the 2018 federal fiscal year, agencies have new budgets and there is a lot money to be spent. We will keep a close eye on awards, regulation changes, and related issues to federal contracting all year long, right here on SmallGovCon.
Let’s get the weekend started off by recapping the latest federal contracting news. In this edition of SmallGovCon Week In Review, we look at the potential for a DUNS replacement, a three-year prison sentence for accepting kickbacks in exchange for contracts, awards for GSA’s $5 billion VETS 2 IT services vehicle, and much more.
You might think that if you send an email with the delivery receipt option and the delivery receipt comes back, the email was delivered. But when an offeror submits a proposal by email, does a delivery receipt mean that the agency necessarily received the proposal in its inbox?
At least under the facts of one recent GAO bid protest, the answer was “no.” In that case, the GAO held that an email delivery receipt wasn’t sufficient to demonstrate that the agency received the electronic proposal.