Helping individuals, companies, and organizations understand key legal and practical considerations for promoting compliance and making better business decisions in these types of federal, state, and local government contracting matters MORE

Bid Protests and the Contracting Process

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Effective immediately, the Department of Defense (DoD) Federal Acquisition Regulation (DFARS) issued its final rule to provide enhanced post-award debriefing rights in competitive negotiated contracts, task orders, and delivery orders exceeding $10 million. The final rule applies to DoD acquisitions greater than $10 million of commercial products, including those for Commercially Available Off-the-Shelf items, and…

When an agency makes an award to the incumbent, the disappointed offerors often believe that the incumbent’s performance of the previous contract must have given it an impermissible leg up on the competition in the form of an organizational conflict of interest (“OCI”). However, as the recent Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) decision in Lukos-VATC JV…

Pre-award protests can be tricky. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) has jurisdiction to hear timely bid protests by interested parties regarding violations of procurement law or regulation. Under GAO rules, a pre-award protest challenging improprieties in a solicitation must be filed before the closing time for receipt of initial proposals or quotations. All other…

Even when agencies use simplified acquisition procedures, they generally must maximize competition to the extent practicable. There is, however, an exception to this default rule if only one source is reasonably available based on the urgency of requirements or other grounds. Unfortunately, as the recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) decision in Summit Technologies, Inc.,…

If the first rule of proposal writing is “give the agency the information it asks for,” the most important corollary is “make the proposal easy to understand.” In other words, clarity and consistency is key; avoid anything in your proposal that might raise questions, confuse the evaluators, or otherwise detract from your message that you…