The SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals has held that the SBA Area Office did not err by refusing to find affiliation between a tribally-owned company and its sister companies.
SBA OHA’s recent decision in Size Appeal of Bosco Contractors, Inc., SBA No. SIZ-5412 (2012), follows on the heels of Size Appeal of Roundhouse PBN, LLC, SBA No. SIZ-5383 (2012), in which SBA OHA found that the SBA had erred by adopting a too-narrow view of the tribal exception from affiliation.
If price realism is evaluated by a procuring agency under a solicitation for a fixed-price contract, the solicitation must inform offerors that price realism will be considered, says the GAO in a recent bid protest decision.
In Emergint Technologies, Inc., B-407006 (Oct. 18, 2012), the GAO sustained a bid protest because the procuring agency in question failed to inform offerors that price realism would be evaluated–and seemed to fundamentally misunderstand the concept of a price realism evaluation.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ award of a contract to a small business under simplified acquisition procedures was improper because it appeared that a number of service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses could have filed the requirement, according to a recent GAO bid protest decision.
Unlike the ongoing Aldevra cases, in which the VA has purposefully continued making awards to non-SDVOSBs under the Federal Supply Schedule in the face of repeated GAO decisions stating that the practice is illegal, the GAO’s decision in Phoenix Environmental Design, Inc., B-407104 (Oct. 26, 2012), suggests that the VA simply did not understand how the agency’s own set-aside rules are supposed to work, at least in the context of a simplified acquisition.
The SBA’s waiver of the non-manufacturer rule in connection with an 8(a) sole source contract resulted in a “pass through” award to a large business, according to a report by the SBA Office of Inspector General. As a result, the 8(a) contractor in question received only $153,000 for “minimal” oversight, while the remainder of the $7.78 million 8(a) set-aside contract went to large companies.
The SBA OIG was quick to point out that the arrangement was legal, but questioned whether the pass-through provided appropriate developmental opportunities to the 8(a) contractor–as well as whether taxpayers are well-served by such large percentages of “small business” contracting dollars flowing to large companies.
Now that the GAO no longer has authority to hear protests of many task order awards valued under $10 million, it is fair to question whether the absence of the self-policing system established by the protest mechanism could contribute to unreasonable or improper task order awards.
According to a report issued by the Department of Defense Inspector General last Friday, at least one agency, the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, has experienced some troubling irregularities in the MAC task order award process, including twice failing to permit all MAC holders to bid on task order competitions.
The GSA e-Buy website may have improperly failed to preserve critical solicitation records, according to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
In Laboratory Corp. of America v. United States, No. 12-622C (2012), the court has asked the government to explain why it should not face sanctions for so-called “spoliation” of evidence, arising from the inability to access archived e-Buy materials. The court also suggested that the procuring agency might have used e-Buy to improperly attempt to modify a solicitation without issuing a formal amendment.
SBA 8(a) mentor-protege joint ventures suffer from inadequate oversight and may not adequately benefit 8(a) protege firms, says the SBA Office of Inspector General. In a recently-released report, the SBA OIG criticized the SBA’s oversight of 8(a) mentor-protege joint ventures, finding that there is no way to ensure that 8(a) protege’s substantially benefit from the 8(a) mentor-protege joint venture program.
Some highlights from the 37-page report follow.