The Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) has yet again clarified that a company’s size change in connection with a merger-and-acquisition event generally does not prevent the company from...more
Is it finally time to fix the outdated, incomplete, and often misunderstood novation regulations? Maybe. On April 5, 2024, the FAR Council released a Notice and Request for Comments requesting comments from federal...more
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has issued a policy memorandum with a goal of promoting small business participation under multiple-award indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contracts (MACs). One of the...more
Small business regulations create one of the stickier wickets in bid protest litigation. Although the Small Business Administration (SBA) has exclusive authority to determine a company’s size and socioeconomic status, the...more
This month's protest spotlight highlights three decisions by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The decisions feature arguments that unsuccessful offerors often want to make, but that are rarely successful, as well as...more
12/7/2023
/ Bias ,
Bid Protests ,
Competition ,
Competitive Bidding ,
Contractors ,
Favoritism ,
Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) ,
Federal Contractors ,
GAO ,
Good Faith ,
Offerors ,
Solicitation ,
Unfair Competition
In the right circumstances, an agency-level protest can be a quick and efficient way to address certain procurement errors, as we discussed a few years ago. One downside of agency‑level protests, however, is their potential...more
The Small Business Administration (SBA) has issued a final rule amending its regulation on lower-tier small business subcontracting credit to account for statutory changes introduced in the National Defense Authorization Act...more
The Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Information Security Oversight Office (ISSO) have issued a Joint Notice to clarify how Facility Security Clearances (FCLs) (also called Entity Eligibility Determinations, or...more
This month’s bid protest roundup looks at two GAO protests from August. One examines the risks of using former federal employees to assist with proposal development when their prior access to non-public information might...more
9/20/2023
/ Bid Protests ,
Buy American Act ,
Conflicts of Interest ,
Construction Project ,
Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) ,
Federal Contractors ,
Federal Employees ,
GAO ,
Material Suppliers ,
Offerors ,
Waivers
Recent changes to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) regulations affect how large businesses can take small business credit for subcontracting to their own mentor-protégé joint ventures (MPJVs). SBA’s final rule...more
On May 19, 2023, the General Services Administration (GSA) issued Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) solicitation refresh 16, which introduced a formal offer process for joint ventures. To provide guidance on navigating those...more
If you’ve been following the saga of the National Institutes of Health Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center’s (NITAAC) Chief Information Officer-Solutions and Partners (CIO-SP4) procurement, you likely...more
Offerors whose proposals are disqualified for immaterial typographical and data input errors will want to read an interesting new protest decision from the Court of Federal Claims. In Aspire Therapy Services & Consultants,...more
In the extensive chatter since the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council (“FAR Council”) published an interim rule on the new Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 52.204-27, “Prohibition on a ByteDance Covered Application,”...more
Forty-five years after enactment of the Contract Disputes Act of 1978 (CDA), contractors and agencies still often struggle to identify what is and isn’t a CDA claim—a term the CDA itself does not define. Until the CDA’s...more
Some of you may recall the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 from nearly a decade ago. It amended the Small Business Act (SBA) to allow a contractor, under certain circumstances, to receive...more
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued an important new decision in the protest of AttainX,Inc ., B-421216, B-421216.2, Jan. 23, 2023, 2023 WL 1860802. The decision addresses how agencies must evaluate the...more
The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) popular shields from affiliation for all-small and mentor-protégé joint ventures are powerful tools for helping small businesses succeed in the federal procurement marketplace. These...more
A common mistake in competitive procurements is a mechanical fixation on the adjectival ratings, color ratings, or numerical “scores” a procuring agency assigns a proposal under a particular evaluation factor. In best value...more
Each year around this time, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) publishes its annual report to Congress on bid protests. Earlier this week, the GAO published the report for Fiscal Year (FY) 2022....more
As most experts expected, Congress has passed the bill to reauthorize the SBIR and STTR programs until September 30, 2025. The bill is now headed for the White House, where the President is expected to sign it into law....more
As of this posting, Congress has not yet reauthorized the popular Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. Given the broad bipartisan support for these programs, most...more
In this month’s bid protest roundup, we consider: (1) an exception to the normal rule governing reliance on affiliate experience and past performance; and (2) two different bid protests of very similar solicitation terms that...more
9/13/2022
/ Bid Protests ,
Court of Federal Claims ,
Federal Contractors ,
GAO ,
Joint Venture ,
Past Performance ,
Registration Requirement ,
Solicitation ,
Subcontractors ,
System For Award Management (SAM) ,
US State Departments
For evaluation purposes in a federal procurement, may an offeror rely upon the past performance and experience of its affiliates? The answer generally is a qualified yes, but the answer and the qualifications may change...more
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) recently promulgated a final rule addressing past performance ratings for small business joint venture members and small business first-tier subcontractors. The rule, which will go...more