Tag Archives: GAO bid protest

2024 GAO Bid Protest Report: Numbers Down, Effectiveness Still Even Odds

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As we look forward to fall traditions like turkey and mashed potatoes, pumpkin spice, and leaf peeping, don’t sleep on another fall tradition, the GAO bid protest report. This report is GAO’s summary of bid protests for the previous fiscal year. It contains some important insights for how GAO bid protest numbers have changed from prior years. Of course, many bid protests are filed at the Court of Federal Claims, so this is only one part of the picture.

Here are some key points from this year: (1) the key effectiveness metric, showing numbers of sustains and corrective actions at GAO, was similar to prior years at 52% for the 2024 fiscal year and (2) total bid protest numbers were down slightly from 2023 but a little above the number for 2022. Numbers are still lower than in 2021 and 2020.

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

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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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GAO Sustain: Offeror’s Failure to Follow Solicitation’s Document Preparation Instructions was Unstated Evaluation Criteria

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A recent GAO decision considered whether an agency could reject an offeror’s proposal based on the offeror’s failure to follow document preparation instructions that were not explicitly stated in the solicitation.

In Hometown Veterans Medical, LLC B-422751 (Oct. 11, 2024), the Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”) issued a request for proposals (“RFP”) from service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses for home oxygen services for patients at the VA’s Birmingham Veterans Medical Center. The RFP stated that offerors would be evaluated on experience and price.

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GAO: Small Business Rule of Two Must be based on Accurate Market Research

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The small business rule of two requires agencies to restrict procurements for small businesses when there is a “a reasonable expectation of obtaining offers from two or more responsible small business concerns that are competitive in terms of fair market prices, quality, and delivery.” FAR 19.502-2. Agencies often use market research to assess whether the small business rule of two is met. But what happens when an agency amends its solicitation terms after conducting market research? Can the new terms render the agency’s market research, and therefore its set-aside decision, unreasonable? In a recent decision, GAO concluded that yes, market research may be insufficient to establish a set-aside if an agency amends the solicitation’s terms.

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GAO Reminder: Joint Ventures Must Register on SAM

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SAM.gov is like the home base of federal government contracting. Everything in federal government contracting seems to either start there, or require using SAM in some fashion. As a consequence, contractors are expected to register on SAM to work in federal contracting. However, it can be easy to overlook registering a joint venture entity on SAM, when contractors making up the joint venture are already registered on SAM. GAO recently took the opportunity to remind contractors of the need to register their joint venture separately on SAM through a bid protest decision.

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Why File: A Rule of Two Protest

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The Rule of Two is the federal contracting rule requiring agencies to set aside a solicitation for competition only between small businesses when there are at least two small businesses that could do the work for a fair price. But that rule does have some exceptions. These exceptions can make it difficult to know the situations that would justify filing a Rule of Two protest. Read on to find out.

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GAO: Don’t Slip Up on SAM Registration, Even for One Day

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If federal contracting had a proverbial town square, it would be SAM.gov. So much federal contracting activity flows through or starts there. A large portion of SAM is contractor information. Contractors are required to be on SAM and are expected to keep their profiles on SAM updated. A “hot off the presses” GAO ruling has confirmed that the timing of SAM registration can make or break a contractor’s winning bid.

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