Under the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, the DoD has the discretion to forego a price or cost evaluation in connection with the award of certain multiple-award contracts.
The 2017 NDAA includes some important changes that are sure to impact federal procurements. Section 825 of the NDAA, which allows DoD contracting officers to forego price or cost evaluations in certain circumstances, is one of these changes.
GAO’s jurisdiction to hear protests of certain civilian task and delivery orders has been restored.
On December 15, 2016, the President signed the 2016 GAO Civilian Task and Delivery Order Protest Authority Act (the “ 2016 Act”) into law. The 2016 Act restores GAO’s recently-expired jurisdiction to hear protests of civilian task and delivery orders valued in excess of $10 million.
As previously foreshadowed and discussed in depth, October 1, 2016, marked the date in which unsuccessful offerors lost the ability to challenge most task order awards issued by civilian agencies.
Although the GAO remains able to hear protests relating to DoD task orders exceeding $10 million, two recent GAO decisions impose an important limitation: GAO does not have jurisdiction to consider awards issued by DoD under a multiple-award contract operated by a civilian agency.
An agency did not act improperly by allowing for oral final proposal revisions, rather than permitting offerors to submit written FPRs following discussions.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that–at least in the context of a task order awarded under FAR 16.505–an agency could validly accept oral revisions to offerors’ proposals.
The GAO’s jurisdiction to hear most protests in connection with task and delivery order awards under civilian multiple award IDIQs has expired.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO confirmed that it no longer has jurisdiction to hear protests in connection with civilian task and delivery order awards valued over $10 million because the underlying statutory authority expired on September 30, 2016.
GAO’s bid protest jurisdiction is defined—and limited—by both statute and its regulations. As part of these jurisdictional limits, GAO ordinarily may only consider protests relating to task order procurements if those orders are valued in excess of $10 million.
But despite this rule, GAO recently considered a protester’s challenge to a task order valued at only $8.7 million. It did so after deciding that the challenge was “intertwined” with the protester’s challenge to its own termination for convenience–another matter the GAO only considers in unusual circumstances.
The GAO ruled recently that an awardee under a multiple-award IDIQ contract did not have standing the protest the agency’s selection of another awardee.
The decision highlights one of the main tenets of government contracting law: competition is in the government’s interest, and a protest that seeks to reduce competition to the benefit of the protestor could, in a case like this, be thrown out.