It’s generally a pretty high bar to argue the ol’ “bait and switch” concerning what personnel will actually perform a contract. But specifically naming a crucial employee of the incumbent in your proposal—without ever talking to that employee about working on the new contract—can meet the bar in a GAO protest.
Continue readingTag Archives: GAO bid protests
GAO: Proposal Evaluations Can’t Take Place in La La Land
Wouldn’t it be swell to simply erase those less-than-flattering moments from your past merely by deleting them? For instance, what if your biographer simply omitted any mention of you being excited for and seeing the apparently horrible new Cats movie?
Does erasing a historical fact–such as an unfavorable detail from a proposal–mean that it never happened?
Continue readingAgency Should Have Investigated Proposal Contradictions, Says GAO
Preparing a proposal for a federal procurement is an involved process. On top of the extensive drafting and estimating work, proposals often require supporting documentation like licenses or certifications. But what happens when a proposal and its supporting documentation contradict one another?
As one contractor learned the hard way, this contradiction can have disastrous consequences.
Continue readingGAO: Trade Agreements Act Inapplicable to Small Business Set-Asides
It’s no secret that federal government contracting has the reputation of being a seemingly endless morass of regulations. In fact, the confusion frequently associated with federal contracting was on full display in a recent GAO protest that implicated the SBA’s nonmanufacturer rule, the Buy American Act, and the Trade Agreements Act. In a procurement that invited bids from both large and small businesses, a large business contractor argued that the application of certain small business contracting regulations would unfairly advantage the small business participants.
GAO disagreed, and dismissed the protest because any advantage was the result of the regulations operating as intended. Sometimes it pays to be a small business.
Continue readingSubcontractor Experience Irrelevant Where Subcontractor Won’t Perform Similar Tasks, Says GAO
Prime and subcontractor teaming is a common way for contractors to leverage the experience of the team’s anticipated subcontractors to make proposals more attractive to federal clients, particularly when past performance is a substantial evaluation consideration.
This approach, however, recently ran into a snag when the proposed subcontractor was not going to perform the discrete work areas that its past performance experience supported, which lowered the past performance score of the bid. In the resulting protest, GAO concluded the agency got the evaluation right, and was not required to credit all of the subcontractor’s experience.
Continue readingGAO: Protest Failed to Establish Legal Reason to Sustain
When protesting at GAO, it’s important to explain not only what you believe the agency did wrong, but also the legal significance of that departure.
That’s what Trinity Global Consulting learned recently when GAO dismissed its protest.
Continue reading“We Couldn’t View the Solicitation,” Argues Protester
The first step in competing for a federal contract is knowing that an opportunity exists in the first place. In a recent protest, a contractor argued it was not able to find an opportunity despite routinely searching the appropriate federal procurement opportunity system, e-Buy. Thus, according to the protesting company, the procurement was not properly publicized and the award was improper.
GAO did not agree.
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