No matter a company’s actual size, the company will be deemed an ineligible large business if it fails to timely respond to a SBA size protest.
Just ask American Blanching Company, which was recently found ineligible for a small business set-aside contract because it did not respond to a SBA size protest within the short size protest response window.
A proposal submitted on behalf of an 8(a) company claimed that the company had performed a $3 million NASA contract even though no such contract existed, according to a recent report issued by the SBA Office of Inspector General. As alleged in the SBA OIG report, the same honesty-challenged 8(a) company claimed to have 33 employees, even though it never had more than two.
Perhaps it is little wonder that the company in question is alleged to have passed through nearly 100% of its work on several 8(a) set-asides to its non-8(a) subcontractor.
When deciding whether to set aside a solicitation for small businesses, procuring agencies need not consider whether prospective small business offerors can perform the contract without violating the SBA’s ostensible subcontractor rule.
This was the ruling of the GAO in a recent bid protest decision, in which the GAO held that a procuring agency had properly set aside a contract for small businesses without prior consideration of the ostensible subcontractor rule. The GAO’s decision aligns with the one discussed in yesterday’s post, in which the GAO held that an a procuring agency need not consider the individual capabilities of potential small business offerors to meet all solicitation requirements before setting aside a solicitation.
A procuring agency is not required to evaluate whether potential small business offerors possess the capabilities to meet all of the requirements of a solicitation before issuing the solicitation as a small business set-aside, according to a recent GAO bid protest decision.
In Swank Healthcare, B-407367 (Dec. 12, 2012), the GAO denied a large business’s bid protest, holding that the procuring agency had properly issued a small business set-aside without first considering whether the small businesses it had identified as likely offerors possessed the capabilities to meet all of the requirements of the solicitation.
Congress has enacted major changes to the limitations on subcontracting rules for small government contractors.
The 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by President Obama on January 3, contains two important changes to the subcontracting limits. First, for services contracts, compliance with the limitations on subcontracting will be based on the total amount paid to the small business, not the cost of the contract incurred for personnel. Second, small businesses will be able to meet their own performance requirements by subcontracting to other small companies.
A procuring agency was not required to consider the past performance of an offeror judged to be technically unacceptable, according to a recent bid protest decision of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
In The Alamo Travel Group, LP v. The United States, No. 12-764C (2012), the Court rejected an incumbent contractor’s argument that an agency could not properly exclude the incumbent’s proposal without first considering its past performance–which, the incumbent argued, would demonstrate its ability to successfully perform the contract.
An awardee’s low price, by itself, is not evidence that the awardee cannot meet the solicitation’s technical requirements, according to a recent GAO bid protest decision.
In Midwest Tube Fabricators, Inc., B-407166, B-407167 (Nov. 20, 2012), the protester argued that the awardee could not meet the solicitation’s requirements at the awarded price. The GAO dismissed the protest, holding that the protester’s allegation did not present a valid basis of protest.