Patent ambiguities present in the solicitation for an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity procurement must be protested prior to the close of proposal submission for the base contract—waiting to protest at the task order level may be too late.
A recent GAO decision shows that when an IDIQ solicitation contains an obvious ambiguity, the rule is “speak now or forever hold your peace.” By the time task order competitions get rolling, the chance to protest will likely be gone.
To be timely, a GAO bid protest challenging the terms of the solicitation must be filed no later than the proposal submission deadline.
A recent GAO decision affirmed that, at least in some cases, this deadline applies to an offeror’s elimination from competition based on an organizational conflict of interest. Because the offeror knew of its potential conflict and the agency’s position on its eligibility before its proposal was submitted, its post-evaluation protest was untimely. GAO dismissed its protest.
A protester’s failure to timely file its bid protest at GAO is almost always certain to lead to the dismissal of its protest. But knowing when the clock starts running for an offeror to file its protest isn’t always clear.
This uncertainty recently tripped up a would-be protester seeking to challenge its exclusion from the competitive range—because that offeror failed to request a pre-award debriefing, its attempt to protest its exclusion following the award and a post-award debriefing was untimely.