“No, we’re not a small business, but we could really, really use that small business set-aside contract.”
That, in essence, was the content of a document recently filed with the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals, which SBA OHA charitably treated as a formal size appeal. Reading this case left me scratching my head and wondering: was this the worst SBA size appeal ever filed?
8(a) mentor-protege agreements cannot be protested by competitors, according to a recently-issued decision by the SBA’s Office of Hearings and Appeals. In Size Appeal of Professional Performance Development Group, Inc., SBA No. SIZ-5398 (2012), SBA OHA held that the SBA’s decision to approve an 8(a) mentor-protege agreement is outside the scope of the SBA size protest process.
Yesterday, the GAO released a report on the DoD’s use of suspension and debarment procedures.
The GAO concluded that during fiscal years 2009-2011 (the years covered by the report), the DoD had active referral systems in place to initiate suspension and debarment proceedings, although the GAO determined that the DoD did not properly inform the GSA of its “compelling reasons” for doing business with suspended or debarred contractors in a handful of cases.
The report weighs in at 34 pages, so in case you did not have time to read the entire thing, here are some of the highlights.
Politicians love vagueness. It’s easy for a candidate to promise broad generalities like lower taxes, a stronger military, better schools, or a free pony in the backyard for every American child (okay, I made that last one up). It’s a lot more difficult to provide specifics about how all those wonderful things will be achieved.
Government contractors, too, can be tempted to rely on vague declarations in proposal-writing. After all, it’s a lot easier than addressing the nuts-and-bolts of the procuring agency’s needs. But as one contractor recently discovered in a GAO bid protest decision, a vague proposal may also be an unacceptable proposal.
If you are a service-disabled veteran hoping to start a new SDVOSB, the VA’s Center for Veterans Enterprise has a message for you: quit your day job.
Yes, you heard that right. Under one of the the VA’s SDVOSB eligibility rules (38 C.F.R. § 74.4(c)(3) to be precise), “one or more veterans or service-disabled veterans who manage the applicant or participant must devote full-time to the business during normal working hours of firms in the same or similar line of business.”
The VA currently interprets this so-called “full-time management” rule to essentially bar a SDVOSB from receiving verification if a service-disabled veteran manager does not work 40 hours per week for the SDVOSB. If the veteran holds a second job, the VA CVE ordinarily denies verification, stating that the veteran cannot be working full-time for the SDVOSB if he or she is also working another job.
“Wait a second,” several service-disabled veterans have told me in surprise, “my company is brand new. There won’t be 40 hours of work to do until I win a contract. In the meantime, I need my current job to pay the bills. Isn’t there a special rule for my situation?”
The answer, unfortunately, is “no.” But there should be a special rule, because in my opinion, the full-time management requirement unfairly and needlessly penalizes SDVOSB start-ups.
In today’s tight budgetary climate, performance-based acquisitions and similar techniques to maximize efficiency seem to be on the rise. Performance-based acquisitions can offer unique opportunities for contractors to develop innovative approaches to meet an agency’s needs while minimizing costs.
In a recent GAO bid protest decision, one offeror proposed fewer labor hours–and a different labor mix–than the awardee, resulting in a lower overall price. Nevertheless, without explanation, the procuring agency in question unilaterally raised the offeror’s labor hours to match the hours proposed by the awardee, resulting in a corresponding increase in evaluated price. The GAO was none too pleased with the agency’s action, sustaining the offeror’s bid protest.
Our firm experienced a strange email outage yesterday: I could receive incoming email messages through my Outlook account, but anything I tried to send bounced back. After several bounce backs, I began emailing clients and other contacts from a gmail account (if you were on the receiving end, my apologies for the temporary lack of a professional email address, but it’s better than ignoring you, right?)
All this is to say that I can sympathize with McKesson Technologies, which experienced technical difficulties (as well as an unfortunate spelling problem) when trying to submit a proposal by email. Although the agency awarded McKesson the contract anyway, a competitor filed a GAO bid protest, and that was the end of McKesson’s award.