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 protest

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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…

Ideally, an agency’s solicitation would provide comprehensive information about its requirements so that interested offerors each had what they needed to craft their best response to the agency’s actual needs. Such a situation would create a level playing field for competition and allow the agency to conduct a meaningful “apples to apples” evaluation to determine…

When an agency announces its intent to take corrective action in response to a protest, it’s easy for the protester to feel that it has “won”—and to some extent it has. At the very least, its protest has prompted the agency to regroup and remedy one or more perceived problems with the subject procurement. Despite…