Reverse auctions would be prohibited for many small business procurements under a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2015, which has been passed by the House of Representatives.
Under the bill, reverse auctions would be disallowed when the government seeks to award a “covered contract,” so long as the contract is suitable for small businesses or is set-aside under one of many small business preference programs.
Small businesses were awarded 23.39% of prime contracting dollars in Fiscal Year 2013, a jump of more than a percentage point from FY 2012 levels–and above the 23% government-wide goal for the first time in several years.
According to the recently-released SBA Procurement Scorecard, the government exceeded its goals for SDVOSBs and SDBs, but failed to hit its targets for HUBZones and WOSBs. Despite these shortfalls, the SBA gave the government an overall “A” rating for its FY 2013 performance.
August will be a very exciting and busy month as I will be speaking at government contracting events in Texas, California and Oklahoma.
My first stop is the Government Procurement Conference in Arlington, Texas on August 6. I will be giving a brief morning keynote on recent legal developments in government contracting, followed by an in-depth breakout session on the same subject. My next stop will be sunny San Diego, California. On August 12, I will be presenting a workshop on GAO Bid Protests at the Navy Gold Coast Conference. I will stick around San Diego through August 14th, when I will present a session on joint venturing and teaming, sponsored by the San Diego Contracting Opportunities Center. My final August stop will be the Indian Country Business Summit in Norman, Oklahoma on August 26 and 27. My workshop will focus on teaming agreements.
Please let me know if you will be at any of these great events. See you there!
A large business was appropriately awarded a “Marginal” score for small business participation based on the large business’s history of failing to meet its small business subcontracting goals.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that the procuring agency properly assigned the large business a low score based on the large business’s history of unmet subcontracting goals, even though the large business apparently pledged to subcontract a significant amount of work to small businesses under the solicitation in question.
A Contracting Officer’s death did not waive the requirement that a contractor file a claim with the agency before bringing its claim to federal court.
In a recent decision, the Court of Federal Claims held that a contractor was not entitled to forego the claim requirement because of the Contracting Officer’s death–even though the agency did not appoint a replacement.
A procuring agency unreasonably assigned an awardee an “Outstanding” score for its proposal to retain a large portion of the incumbent workforce, even though the awardee intended to offer the incumbent employees significantly lower salaries than the employees were earning on the incumbent contract.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that it was unreasonable for the agency to fail to consider whether the differences in compensation would affect the awardee’s ability to recruit and retain the incumbent workforce.
A procuring agency properly considered the past performance of a joint venture’s two partners, even though the solicitation prohibited the consideration of subcontractors’ past performance.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that where a solicitation only allowed past performance references for the “prime offeror,” the agency was permitted to consider the past performance of two joint venture partners–the entities comprising a “prime offeror.”