Tag Archives: pre-award bid protests

Back to Basics: Interested Parties

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Imagine you’ve submitted a bid for a procurement that you believe your company is a shoo-in for. Nobody comes close to the experience and skills your company brings to the table. A while later, you learn that the new company down the street was awarded the contract. There clearly must be a mistake. The awardee doesn’t have half the experience your company has in this industry. Feeling wronged, you decide to file a bid protest questioning the award at the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Your lawyer informs you that a bid protest may be dismissed if the protester doesn’t qualify as an interested party. But you were an actual bidder who should have been awarded the contract. Of course you’re an interested party—right?

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Why File: A GAO Pre-Award Protest

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For our third entry in our “Why File” series, we will be covering one of the two big bid protest routes, a “pre-award” Government Accountability Office (GAO) bid protest. Most contractors are fairly familiar with GAO bid protests that occur after an agency makes their award decision (more on this in a later “Why File” post). But contractors may be less familiar with pre-award bid protests at GAO. We will cover some of the most common reasons pre-award protests are filed at GAO, based primarily on contracting regulations and bid protest cases. As always, please keep in mind, despite the commonalities discussed below, the question of whether to protest is highly fact-specific and demands careful consideration.

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Back to Basics: Pre-Award Bid Protests

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Many bid protests we handle at Koprince McCall Pottroff are filed after the contract has been awarded to an offeror. However, sometimes there are issues that are apparent in the solicitation that require clarification or correction prior to the bidding or proposal deadline. In these situations, potential offerors can file a pre-award protest that challenges solicitation terms, but, as with most GAO matters, there are strict deadlines that must be adhered to if the protestor wants to avoid her protest being dismissed. While pre-award protest is the common term, remember that a challenge to a solicitation’s terms is due before the proposal deadline.

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Timing Issues: Challenges to Brand Name Salient Characteristics Due Before Proposal Submission, Says GAO

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Time. It’s a great Pink Floyd song. It’s also something that frequently trips up contractors filing protests before GAO. As one contractor recently discovered, a challenge to the salient characteristics of a brand name product is equivalent to challenging the terms of a solicitation, which carries a different protest deadline than evaluation challenges.

Unfortunately for the protester, its argument did not fair nearly as well as one of David Gilmour’s solos.

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GAO Denies Challenge to Solicitation Terms: Use of “Tactical” Was Imprecise, but Allowable

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In the world of federal contracting, precision matters. In fact, precision is often essential when developing a winning proposal. When it comes to subjective evaluation considerations, however, it can be challenging to articulate relevant evaluation criteria with a high level of precision. Indeed, as one prospective offeror recently discovered, some evaluation terms are good enough for government work, despite being imprecise.

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GAO Rules RFQ Requirement Unreasonably Restricted Competition

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In recent GAO decision, Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc., B-418449 (Comp. Gen. May 18, 2020), GAO reminded the Marine Corps to make sure its RFQ requirements were reasonable—and in line with the underlying contract.

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5 Things You Should Know: Pre-Award Bid Protests

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Editor’s note: For more information, check out our updated post on Pre-Award Bid Protests.

Small businesses often search for ways to increase their competitiveness for federal government contracts. A sometimes overlooked method is to try to better define the procurement’s requirements in a manner that improves a firm’s chances of being awarded the contract, through a pre-award bid protest.

Here are five things you should know about pre-award protests:

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