No Wholesaler NAICS Codes For Set-Aside Contracts, SBA OHA Confirms

Federal agencies must classify procurements for supplies under the appropriate manufacturing or supply NAICS code, not under a wholesale trade or retail trade NAICS code.

In a recent NAICS code appeal decision, the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals confirmed that supply procurements should not be classified under wholesale or retail trade NAICS codes–and rejected a prospective offeror’s claim that the agency should have assigned a wholesale trade NAICS code to the solicitation.

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SmallGovCon Week In Review: October 19-23, 2015

My poor, long-suffering Chicago Cubs will spend another winter without a World Series trophy.  Maybe next year the Cubbies will finally break the Curse of the Billy Goat.  In the meantime, there is plenty happening in the world of government contracting to keep my mind off of baseball.

In this week’s SmallGovCon Week In Review, a prison sentence is handed down in a SDVOSB fraud case while guilty pleas are entered in a separate case alleging DBE fraud, President Obama vetoes the 2016 NDAA, Carroll Bernard of GOVOLOGY provides an overview of the non-manufacturer rule, and much more.

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ASBCA: Contractor’s Request For Cancellation Was Not A Default

A contractor’s request that the agency issue a “no-cost” cancellation of its contract was not a default–and did not justify the government’s default termination of the contract.

In a recent decision, the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals held that a contractor did not repudiate its contract by requesting a cancellation because the contractor’s request was not a “positive, definite, unconditional, and unequivocal refusal to perform.”

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GSA Schedule: Contractor Offers Non-Schedule Items, Gets Order Anyway

When an agency orders goods or services using the GSA Schedule, the ordered items generally must be on the awardee’s Schedule contract as of the date of the order–but need not be on the Schedule contract at an earlier date.

In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that an agency had properly awarded a GSA Schedule order even though the awardee did not have the ordered services on its Schedule contract at the time of its offer, because the awardee’s GSA Schedule contract was modified to include those services by the date of the order.

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Thank You, Utah!

I am back in Kansas after a great trip to Salt Lake City, where I spoke at the 10th Annual PTAC Procurement Symposium.  My presentation covered important new developments in government contracting, including the SBA’s proposed new “universal” mentor-protege program, the new WOSB sole source authority, and more.

Many thanks to Fred Lange, Chuck Spence, and their team at the Utah PTAC for inviting me to speak.  Thanks also to all of those who attended the conference and made this such a great event.

I will be here in Lawrence for a few weeks, and then it is on to Washington, DC, where I will be sitting in on Supreme Court oral arguments in the Kingdomware SDVOSB/VOSB case and speaking on Kingdomware and other timely government contracting topics at the APTAC Fall Conference.

Small Business Status And Task Orders: GAO Provides Some Clarity

According to the GAO, a business qualifies as small for purposes of a task order competition under a Governmentwide Acquisition Contract so long as the business was small for purposes of the underlying GWAC, and the Contracting Officer does not request size recertification in connection with the task order.  And even if recertification is required for the task order, the operative date to determine small business status is the date of the task order offer–not the date the task order is awarded.

In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO and SBA both weighed in on the question of small business size status for task order competitions, providing some helpful clarity on this often-confusing topic.

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