Tag Archives: bid protest

SmallGovCon Week in Review: February 13-17, 2023

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Happy Friday and happy belated Valentine’s Day. We hope you had a great week and found some time to celebrate with your loved ones. We have certainly been in celebration mode with the Kansas City Chiefs winning the Super Bowl on Sunday. What an exciting game and what a great season!

There was a lot of news from the federal government contracting world this week, as well. We have included a few articles that we hope will be of interest to you below, including those on small business contracting involvement and CIO-SP4 protests. Enjoy your weekend.

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Key Personnel Unavailability Leads to Sustained GAO Protest

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Key personnel are an important term in many proposals. Establishing the resume, experience, and availability of personnel that will perform major functions of a contract is a key (dad joke) aspect of a winning proposal. As one offeror found out, when key personnel become unavailable, the technical acceptability of the entire offer can be in jeopardy.

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2021 GAO Bid Protest Report Reveals Nearly Half of Protests are Successful

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GAO has released its annual bid protest report. Along with mashed potatoes and stuffing, it’s one of our favorite holiday traditions at SmallGovCon. This report came over a month earlier than last year, making this more of a Thanksgiving treat than Christmas this year.

A couple key takeaways are (1) the key effectiveness metric, showing numbers of sustains and corrective actions at GAO, was 48% for the 2021 fiscal year and (2) total bid protest numbers are down slightly, continuing a trend from the last few years.

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Inadvertent Release of Incumbent Pricing Data Leads to Sustained Protest

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Protecting sensitive business information, especially pricing, is essential even in the GAO bid protest realm. As an agency found out, even an inadvertent release of such information could lead to a sustained protest.

This slip up resulted in the cancellation of a nearly $1 billion contract. Needless to say, this was a big deal. How did this happen, and what should parties be looking for to protect their confidential data?

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GAO Annual Bid Protest Report Shows 51% Effectiveness Rate

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In 2020, the GAO Bid Protest effectiveness rate crossed the 50% threshold, higher than we’ve seen it in any recent year.  Overall, cases filed went down a mere 2% year over year.

GAO issues its yearly report as a requirement under statute. Congress is particularly concerned with knowing 1) which federal agencies didn’t follow GAO’s recommendations in bid protests and 2) if GAO did not issue a decision in 100 days. As like most years, GAO was “pleased” to report that all agencies followed its recommendations, when given, and that it timely (within 100 days) decided all bid protests.

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Persistence Pays: GAO Sustains After Fourth Protest Due to Unreasonably Narrow Corrective Action

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In its recent decision, Peraton, Inc., B-416916.8, et al. (Aug. 3, 2020), GAO ultimately sustained a protest that the Department of State’s corrective action was unreasonably limited—recommending the protester be reimbursed its protest costs in the process.

For more on how it reached this result, buckle up! Because it was a long road for the protester to reach the GAO sustain.

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Protester Goes Seven for Seven in Arguments Before GAO

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Veterans of the bid protest process know that it’s not uncommon for a protester to make half a dozen arguments and prevail on only one.

Know what that’s called? A win. But when a protester goes seven for seven, you have to tip your cap.

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