2024-2025 Bid Protest Decisions with Far-Reaching Impacts for Government Contractors
Navigating Bid Protest Choices at GAO and COFC
DE Under 3: U.S. GAO Report on Military Spouse Employment Focused on Challenges of Part-Time Work
A Discussion with GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez
GovCon Perspectives Podcast Episode 24: Effective Use of “Open and Frank” Discussions in Bid Protests
Award Protests: Choosing the Forum
How to Assess the Likelihood of Success in Deciding Whether to Bring a Bid Protest
Price realism challenges stand out as a common basis for bid protests in federal procurements. A competitor’s unrealistically low pricing may signal a lack of understanding or commitment to contract performance. Price...more
On May 7, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) dismissed a protest challenging the terms of a solicitation for being unduly restrictive. The protest highlights three important considerations that contractors should...more
In a cautionary decision that reinforces the importance of strict compliance with solicitation instructions, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently denied in part and dismissed in part a protest challenging a...more
GAO just sharpened the distinction between winning and losing protest arguments related to key project personnel. The issue turns on the question of whether the winning proposal included “material misrepresentations” – and...more
In FI Consulting, Inc., B-423274 (April 11, 2025), FI Consulting, Inc. (FIC) protested its elimination from a procurement for U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) program support services after the agency rejected its...more
This month’s bid protest roundup highlights three protest decisions released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Federal Circuit) in March. The first discusses an...more
As those in the federal contracting community wait anxiously for rumored and hinted at changes to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (“FAR”), we are beginning to evaluate how certain of those changes might most impact our...more
In the recent MicroTechnologies LLC and SMS Data Products Group, Inc. decisions, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) sustained protests challenging the Agency’s failure to perform the required price risk analysis under...more
On February 26, GAO denied the protest of Mission Analytics, Inc., challenging the award of a small business set-aside contract to ThunderCat Technology, LLC, explaining that “it is a firm’s responsibility to submit a...more
In its “GAO Bid Protest Annual Report to Congress for Fiscal Year 2024,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed the most common reasons bid protests were sustained this past year, including: (1) unreasonable...more
The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes two significant changes to DoD bid protests that are generally not favorable to contractors. (Both changes appear in Section 885 of the NDAA and can be viewed at...more
On December 30, 2024, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) dismissed a protest by Orion Government Services, Inc. (Orion) after determining that Orion lacked standing to protest because one of its proposed key personnel...more
In the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (“FY25 NDAA”), Congress included some important provisions related to the bid protest process at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (“GAO”). These provisions...more
On January 15, 2025, the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Council published a proposed rule overhauling the FAR’s Organizational Conflict of Interest (OCI) provisions. The proposed rule follows a December 2022 law that...more
This month’s bid protest roundup highlights one decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, addressing a proposal timely submitted but received late, and two decisions from the U.S. Government...more
In a recent Board decision dated December 13, 2023, the United States Army Corps of Engineers sought to amend its answer in the case of APPEALS OF – KELLOGG BROWN & ROOT SERVICES, INC., under Contract No. W912GB-13-C-0011....more
Any acquisition involving a small business government contractor comes with a host of questions concerning what effect, if any, the transaction may have on the small business’s size and status post-closing. ...more
This is the first edition of Holland & Knight's Federal Real Estate Leasing Year in Review. For years, our GSA Leasing & Federal Real Estate Team has worked with LexisNexis to provide updated versions of the Federal...more
Over the last few years, the government has shifted away from lowest price technically acceptable valuations placing a larger importance on past performance. The past performance requirement can sometimes create obstacles for...more
The Berry Amendment Example - Hopeful government contractors must be aware of all the requirements of a solicitation to avoid being deemed non-responsive. This is rarely a simple task; however, when multiple clauses...more
Court rules agencies must evaluate the realism of compensation in fixed-price professional services contracts. An agency must evaluate the risk of whether an offeror’s proposed professional compensation is too low to...more
GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS - “Mid-Sized Businesses: Too Big to be Small and Too Small to be Big” House Small Business Committee Press Release, November 14, 2017. Retrieved from smallbusiness.house.gov The House Committee on...more