The Government Printing Office is not required to refer non-responsibility determinations involving small businesses to the Small Business Administration under the Certificate of Competency program.
According to a recent GAO bid protest decision, the GPO’s status as a legislative entity exempts it from the Certificate of Competency process–much to the disappointment of the small business protester in question.
Price reasonableness and price realism are both benchmarks against which a procuring agency may evaluate an offeror’s price, but price reasonableness and price realism–though they are often confused for one another–are not the same thing.
As the GAO explained in a recent bid protest decision, one of the terms involves consideration of whether an offeror’s price is too low, whereas the other evaluates whether the price is too high. The distinction is particularly important for fixed-price procurements, in which the question of whether pricing is too low is not one the procuring agency is always required to ask.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that an agency did not fail to provide an offeror with meaningful discussions about an evaluated weakness in the offeror’s staffing approach because the aspect of the staffing plan deemed to be a weakness was introduced in the offeror’s final proposal revision, or FPR.
A Treasury Department solicitation did not require contractors to be certified HUBZone participants at the time the solicitation was issued, despite language in the solicitation arguably requiring just that in order to receive a high rating for socioeconomic status.
In a recent GAO bid protest decision, the GAO held that the agency properly interpreted the solicitation to require HUBZone certification at the time proposals were due, not the time the solicitation was issued. The GAO’s ruling comports with the HUBZone program regulations, which do not require contractors to be certified at the time a solicitation is issued in order to be considered HUBZone participants for purposes of that solicitation.
A contractor was awarded an “Excellent” past performance score despite submitting only three past performance references, not the five past performance references required by the solicitation.
Although one might think that a contractor would be penalized for failing to satisfy such a requirement, the GAO held that the procuring agency properly gave the contractor in question a high past performance score, based on the three submitted references and past performance information obtained from other sources.
The GAO has held that the deadline for offerors to submit proposals need not be extended when an agency issues an amendment to the solicitation, unless the failure to extend adversely affects competition or was a deliberate attempt to exclude an offeror.
In a recent GAO bid protest decision, the GAO rejected the protester’s contention that the agency should have extended the proposal deadline to allow offerors more time to respond to two amendments–which were issued three days and one day, respectively, before the proposal due date.
A procuring agency failed to conduct meaningful discussions where it merely asked a contractor to clarify its understanding of a certain portion of the solicitation, rather than informing the contractor of specific proposal weaknesses relating to that same portion of the solicitation.
The GAO’s bid protest decision in Nexant, Inc., B-407708, B-407708.2 (Jan. 30, 2013) demonstrates that when an agency has identified specific weaknesses in a contractor’s proposal, discussions must be sufficiently detailed to enable the contractor to understand the agency’s concern and have the opportunity to improve its proposal.