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
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has issued a precedential decision in NIKA Technologies, Inc. v. United States, reversing a decision by the Court of Federal Claims on the timelines for securing a stay of contract...more
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released its report on bid protest statistics for Fiscal Year 2019. As in past years, the GAO’s figures count supplemental protests by the same protester and other parties’...more
The Department of Defense (DOD) has promulgated the final rule restricting DOD’s use of Lowest Price Technically Acceptable (LPTA) acquisition methods. The final rule adopts, without any substantive changes, the proposed rule...more
Our monthly bid protest Law360 spotlight will discuss a handful of interesting bid protests from the preceding month, highlighting the most noteworthy aspects of the decisions for companies competing for contracts and...more
In an important new decision, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected a line of Court of Federal Claims case law that required agencies to “narrowly tailor” corrective action to fit the procurement errors the...more
In Exceptional Software Strategies, Inc., B-416232, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently addressed the obscure rules for when a disappointed offeror must request a debriefing. It’s generally well known that,...more
Most corporate transactions go forward without protests. Several prominent protest decisions over the last few years, however, have drawn attention to the complicated and sometimes unpredictable effect corporate transactions...more
We previously have referred in passing to Government bad faith as a protest ground that almost never is worth raising. Today, we’ll address this rarely successful protest ground and discuss why it’s almost always a loser, as...more
Offerors should, and generally do, carefully guard the confidentiality of their bid and proposal information. And agencies that receive that information generally are careful to prevent its improper release, much as they...more
In our last post, we discussed a few procedural rules that can exclude an otherwise meritorious ground from protest. There are also a number of substantive issues that the GAO’s rules exclude from review. See 4 C.F.R. §...more
The federal government sets aside many contracts for small businesses, but not all small business set-asides are created equal. Instead, different size standards define small business status for different procurements. The...more