The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in a recent case decided the issue of agency corrective action and how it impacts the pre-award decision and post-award decision process. In this case, the appellant appealed the Court of Federal Claim’s decision that the United States Transportation Command decision to… Read more »
Avoid Costly Mistakes When Submitting 8(a) Joint Venture Past Performance GAO protests continue to surface because of improper past performance evaluation of proposals. In a recent case, GAO sustained a protest because NASA considered the awardee’s past performance. There was no record of actual performance. The problem was that the solicitation stated that NASA would not… Read more »
What Does Ambiguity Mean? Many government contract bidders find the rules of patent ambiguity in solicitations to be very confusing. In many cases, they see the problem when filing a post-award bid protest. The recent decision at the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit illustrates how important it… Read more »
A common dispute arises in federal government contracting as to whether a term extension for a General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Supply Schedule Contract FSS task order constitutes a new contract. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled on this very issue in a recent case. The… Read more »
One reason why bid protests are successful is when the contractor shows that the failure to conduct lawful discussions under FAR 15.306 GAO looks at these issues very carefully. The underlying principle of having meaningful discussions is the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA). Each bidder is entitled to its proposal being… Read more »
Protesting an agency’s technical proposal evaluation and management evaluation factors, and ultimate source selection decision can be problematic you do not show that the Source Selection Board acted unreasonably or failed to follow the RFP requirements. Technical Proposal Evaluation of Management Factors In a recent GAO protest, for example, the… Read more »
Lawyers Appealing from COFC Federal Claims Protest Decisions to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit In a recent case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a bid protest decision from the Court of Federal Claims because the appellant had failed to first exhaust… Read more »
Part of a bidder’s government proposal writing efforts is to make sure that it follows the bid submission directions in the solicitation. As obvious as this may sound, companies have been known to make mistakes and cause their proposals to be rejected by the contracting agency. In a recent case,… Read more »
A question often arises as to whether in service-disabled veteran owned business SDVOSB set aside contracts the federal government can restrict market research to a local geographic area. These are tough issues to address in bid protest litigation. The first thing that potential bidders must realize as a Veteran Owned… Read more »
The SBA agency Certificate of Competency (COC) rules allow small business firms to challenge, generally in a bid protest, the agency’s source selection decision that is not technically responsible to perform the contract. What is a Certificate of Competency (COC)? The Government Certificate of Competency Program is in place in order for… Read more »