Tag Archives: GAO bid protests

GAO Allows Contracting Officer Discretion to Act as Tie-Breaker

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Your company has submitted a proposal for a Lowest-Priced, Technically Acceptable acquisition. To your surprise, you find out another company has submitted a technically acceptable offer with the same price. Equally surprising, the solicitation does not contain any provisions instructing the agency on how to pick from otherwise equal bids. So what is the contracting officer to do – issue an order for a standoff, a la the O.K. Corral? (For the record, we do not advise this as a viable method of conflict resolution.)

Fortunately, GAO encourages a less drastic solution–use of the contracting officer’s reasonable discretion.

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Pre-Solicitation Notices not Grounds for Protests, GAO says

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Like my alarm clock ringing on Monday mornings, GAO recently reminded protestors that protests based on pre-solicitation notices are just too early.

In F-Star Zaragosa Port, LLC; F-Star Socorro Holding, LLC, B-417414, et al. (Comp. Gen. Apr. 15, 2019), GAO dismissed protests based on pre-solicitation notices as premature.   

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GAO Won’t Resolve Alleged Corporate Espionage Dispute

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In a recent GAO bid protest, IBM Corp. accused a subcontractor of giving its proposal to a competitor.

GAO dismissed the accusation, explaining that at its core, alleged corporate espionage is a disagreement between two parties, not a contractor and the federal government and therefore not an appropriate matter for resolution in a bid protest.

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GAO: Agencies Must Consider Information Gathered by Reverse Auction Providers

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What are federal contractors supposed to do when FedBid (now Unison) requests additional information related to a proposal and the awarding agency ignores that information in its awarding decision?

GAO recently held that the agency must consider all information gathered by reverse auction providers.

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GAO: Past Performance Should Relate to Solicited Services

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Past performance is an important evaluation factor in many solicitations. Essentially, it allows an agency to guess as to the likelihood of an offeror’s successful performance under a solicitation by looking to its history of performance on similar projects in the past.

GAO recently confirmed it is “axiomatic” that past performance examples should align with the solicitation’s requirements. If an offeror submits unrelated examples, it risks a downgraded past performance score.

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Don’t Forget the Email Attachment—Protest Denied

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A protester recently lost an effort to get an agency to consider a late proposal arguing that it was emailed to the agency on the due date.

Even though the quote would have been less expensive than the awardee’s and this was a lowest-price technically-acceptable procurement, GAO denied the protest finding that the email was a few hours late and did not include the attached quotation.

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Inconsistency Killed the Cat: GAO Sustains Protest Where Agency Inconsistently Evaluated Proposal

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GAO generally defers to an agency’s judgment when it comes to the evaluation of proposals. This deference flags, however, when an agency evaluates competing proposals inconsistently; or, in other words, treats offerors disparately.

Let’s take a look at how GAO, in a recently sustained protest, found that the agency’s evaluation was unreasonable.

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