A SDVOSB was improperly downgraded for not identifying its subcontractors in its proposal, according to a recent GAO bid protest decision.
In Coburn Contractors, LLC, B-408279.2 (Sept. 30, 2013), the GAO held that the VA improperly applied an unstated evaluation criterion by requiring that the protester identify its subcontractors, because according to the solicitation, a subcontractor list was only required at the task order level.
A procuring agency appropriately considered the size of offerors’ past performance projects in evaluating proposals, even though project size was not expressly stated as an evaluation factor.
According to a recent GAO bid protest decision, contractors should assume that project size may be considered whenever past performance is evaluated, because size bears on the relevancy of a past performance project.
The GAO’s bid protest jurisdiction does not extend to complaints that a government agency has violated a company’s intellectual property rights.
According to a recent GAO bid protest decision, the GAO lacks jurisdiction over intellectual property matters, and affected companies must seek relief in the federal courts.
GAO bid protests sometimes involve allegations that a particular contracting officer and/or other government personnel were biased against the protester.
However, as a recent GAO bid protest decision demonstrates, without “convincing proof,” which can be very difficult to obtain, the GAO will not sustain a protest allegation of bias or bad faith on the part of government employees. In other words, without a “smoking gun,” making an allegation of bias or bad faith may simply be a waste of time.
In discussions, a procuring agency is not required to inform a prospective contractor that its costs are higher than those of its competitors, unless those costs are so high as to be unreasonable.
This important potential limitation on the scope of discussions was at issue in a recent GAO bid protest decision, in which the GAO held that an agency had not erred by failing to inform an offeror that its proposed costs were approximately $3 million higher than the awardee’s.
An agency may amend a solicitation after the deadline for receiving offers, so long as the amendment is not “so substantial as to exceed what prospective offerors reasonably could have anticipated” in submitting offers under the original solicitation.
This rule, which is codified at FAR 15.206(e), was at issue in a recent GAO bid protest decision, in which the GAO held that the amendment merely clarified the original solicitation and thus did not require cancellation.
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,” said the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
In a recently published bid protest decision, the GAO held that a procuring agency was not entitled to its own facts when it came to the contents of the protester’s proposal. Because the proposal contained the very items the agency claimed were missing, the GAO sustained the protest.