A Glitch In Time? GAO Denies Late Proposal Protest for Lack of Systemic Outages with Agency System 

Both GAO and the federal agencies take proposal deadlines with the utmost seriousness. We have discussed a few other examples of late proposals being denied by GAO before. Now, we have another one. This time, the protester put forth the argument that its lateness was not its fault. Rather, it was caused by issues with the agency’s proposal receipt system. Unfortunately for the protester, GAO did not accept this argument. Here, we will go into how it arrived at that decision. 

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Compensation for Professional Employees and You: GAO Sustains Where Agency Doesn’t Explain Why Proposed Decreased Compensation is Reasonable

While the federal government uses wage determinations for many occupations that contractors must abide by, things are different with professional occupations such as physicians, accountants, engineers, and (yours truly) attorneys. Contractors generally have more leeway with regard to how they pay their professional employees on a given contract. But it’s not unlimited. This is something that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) didn’t address in its evaluation for a procurement, resulting in a successful GAO protest. In this post, we’ll look at the rules here and what went wrong.

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New FAR Final Rule Promotes Sustainability

As many know, a prominent goal of President Biden’s administration has been to promote green initiatives, and help reduce America’s carbon footprint. That initiative has now found its way to federal contracting. In a recent final rule, the FAR is being updated to facilitate federal contracting’s move, closer to net-zero emissions. This FAR update, updates and sets requirements for agencies to procure “sustainable products and services”, outlines what those products and services actually are, and places new expectations on contractors.

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SmallGovCon Week in Review: April 1-5, 2024

Happy April! We hope everyone had a great week. Yet another beautiful spring Friday for us at SmallGovCon! And you guessed it, it’s time for your week in review. 

We’ve included some fascinating articles on what’s happening in the federal government contracting world we think you will enjoy. These included how contractors may be impacted in an election year, as well as a bill to reduce red tape in procurement. Have a wonderful weekend!

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Govology Webinar: Navigating Government Regulations in Solicitations and Contracts, March 27, 2024, 1:00pm EDT

Steven Koprince, Govology Legal Analyst and retired founder of Koprince McCall Pottroff will be presenting this webinar to help you understand the applicable rules and regulations in government contracts and the Federal Acquisition Regulation. These rules can be lengthy and complex–and contractors may also need to follow rules outside the FAR, such as those found in FAR supplements and the regulations of the U.S. Small Business Administration. Please join Steve as he walks you through the process. Register here.

Year in Review: Top SmallGovCon Posts of 2023

Happy New Year to our SmallGovCon readers! While we have already posted some updates from 2024, it’s a good time to reflect on the important posts from 2023.

This post revisits those blog posts from 2023 that were the most popular. Below, we summarize the blogs written in 2023 that were the most popular as well as the perennial favorites from years past that were the most viewed in 2023. It’s a good chance to look back on the important articles from 2023, and those topics of continuing interest to federal contractors.

Here are the top 10 blog posts that were posted in 2023. As usual, our readers were interested in changes to SBA’s rules, including changes to the 8(a) Program and the social disadvantage requirement, as well as our Back to Basics series focusing on issues such as teaming agreements, debriefings, and SAM registration.

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Room for Improvement: Statistics Suggest It is Unclear if Large Businesses are Meeting Small Business Subcontracting Goals.

Just as agencies have established goals to award a certain percentage of their procurements to small businesses and businesses participating in socio-economic programs like the 8(a) Program, large business contractors must establish goals to include small business subcontractors in their pool of subcontractors for unrestricted awards over the applicable threshold in FAR 19.702 ($750,000 for most contracts, $1.5 million for construction contracts). While the specific goal will vary with each contract (or in some cases may be on a company-wide basis), it is rare for a contracting officer to find a large business hasn’t met the given goal. However, an investigation by GAO indicates that large business contractors aren’t meeting their small business subcontracting goals as often as the government would hope. Let’s take a deeper look at these findings.

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