When an agency performs a cost realism evaluation under a solicitation involving significant labor costs, the agency must evaluate offerors’ proposed rates of employee compensation, not just offerors’ fully burdened labor rates.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that an agency erred by basing its realism evaluation on offerors’ fully burdened labor rates, without considering whether the direct rates of compensation were sufficient to recruit and retain qualified personnel.
A contractor was eligible for award of a small business set-aside task order because the contractor was “small” as of the date of its task order proposal–even though the contractor outgrew the size standard by the time the task order was awarded.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that a contractor may qualify for the award of a set-aside task order based on the date of its initial proposal, even in cases where the agency is prohibited from taking small business credit for the award.
An agency has no obligation to consider outside information bearing on an offeror’s past performance when the offeror fails to include information in its proposal.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO concluded that an agency had no obligation in its past performance evaluation or cost evaluation to import and consider favorable information the offeror could have, but did not include in its proposal.
In a victory for common sense, the GAO has held that a proposal that was in the agency’s possession before the due date was not “late,” even though the offeror emailed the proposal to the agency instead of submitting it through an online portal.
The agency’s attempt to reject the proposal was particularly egregious because the agency told the protester that the proposal could be submitted by email–then rejected the proposal when the protester did just that.