A contractor could not file a valid bid protest challenging an agency’s decision to terminate the contractor’s task order, according to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
In a recent decision, the Court agreed with the GAO, which also held that the contractor’s challenge involved a matter of contract administration–something outside the bid protest process.
Past performance evaluations normally consider two aspects of an offeror’s prior work: whether that performance was recent and relevant. But in making its best value determination, must an agency also consider the duration of an offeror’s past performance?
A recent GAO bid protest decision answered this question, at least under the rules established in the solicitation at hand. In Technica LLC, B-413546.4 et al. (July 10, 2017), GAO denied a protest challenging the sufficiency of an awardee’s past performance even though the awardee’s past performance was much shorter than the protester’s.
When an agency competes a task order under a multiple-award contract, the agency must assign the task solicitation a NAICS code set forth in the underlying MAC.
As demonstrated in a recent SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals decision, when the MAC is assigned a single NAICS code, all task orders competed under that MAC will also be assigned that NAICS code–even if a prospective offeror believes that a different NAICS code will best describe the principal purpose of the task order acquisition.
If an SDVOSB was eligible at the time of its initial offer for a multiple-award contract, the SDVOSB ordinarily retains its eligibility for task and delivery orders issued under that contract, unless a contracting officer requests a new SDVOSB certification in connection with a particular order.
In a recent SDVOSB appeal decision, the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals confirmed that regulatory changes adopted by the SBA in 2013 allow an SDVOSB to retain its eligibility for task and delivery orders issued under a multiple-award contract, absent a request for recertification.
The Supreme Court’s now-famous Kingdomware decision doesn’t affect the timeliness of SBA size protests of GSA Schedule orders.
In a recent decision, the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals rejected the notion–based in part on Kingdomware–that an GSA Schedule order is a “contract” for purposes of the SBA’s size protest timeliness rules. Instead, OHA held, the SBA’s existing rules clearly distinguish between contracts and orders, and often effectively do not permit size protests of individual orders.
An agency’s task order award was improper because the order was outside the scope of the underlying IDIQ contract.
In Threat Management Group, LLC, GAO sustained a protest holding that the Air Force violated the Competition in Contracting Act by issuing a task order for some work beyond the scope of the awardee’s IDIQ contract. GAO’s decision highlights the fact that an order must be within the scope of the underlying contract–and the award of an out-of-scope order can be successfully challenged in a bid protest. Continue reading
Taken as a whole, the Government-wide performance metrics for small business utilization are encouraging.
The Small Business Administration’s FY2015 report card shows that the Government exceeded its prime contracting goals across four of the five socioeconomic categories measured. Moreover, the amount of federal spend going to small businesses reached an all-time high of over 25%.