Wouldn’t you like to know five things about size protests and appeals?
Click here to read the answers to these questions: http://smallgovcon.com/five-things/size-protests-and-appeals/
Every unit of government has rules about how it purchases goods and services. As a vendor, your success in doing business with government agencies is dependent upon your knowledge of those rules.
The federal government follows the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), and many federal agencies also issue FAR supplements. Similarly, each state government has its own purchasing procedures.
In the State of Georgia, the Department of Administrative Services, through its State Purchasing Division (SPD), maintains the Georgia Procurement Manual (GPM). The GPM governs how state government entities purchase needed goods and supplies. It also provides information to suppliers about how to conduct business with the State of Georgia. SPD periodically revises the GPM to incorporate legislative changes, new automated processes and best practices.
In May of this year, the GPM was updated in several important ways, including the supplier protest process as well as internal procedural updates, such as new automated processes for state procurement staff to submit certain reports and requests to SPD. You can see a summary of the changes here. A brief overview of the new supplier protest process follows.
GPM Section 6.5 defines how suppliers may challenge certain purchasing actions by state entities, such as: solicitations, proposed sole source contracts, proposed purchases through consortia or cooperative purchasing agreements, the results of a Request for Qualified Contractors and the state’s proposed or actual award of a contract.
SPD has updated the supplier protest process to:
Changes became effective May 18, 2018. You can listen to a recorded webinar on the changes to the Georgia Procurement Manual here: GPM changes. (Presentation begins at the 9:55 mark.)
The Defense Department is proposing legislation to impose new constraints on government contractors’ ability to protest federal agencies’ award decisions, including by rolling back their rights to file bid protests in federal court.
Currently, companies who believe an agency mishandled a contract award have two independent forums to file protests: the Government Accountability Office and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (COFC). But some firms opt to take their cases to both.
If, for example, GAO denies or dismisses their protest, they still have the right to file a new claim at the COFC.
DoD’s proposal would essentially eliminate that option by requiring contractors to bring cases to COFC within 10 days of the agency’s award decision: the same deadline used by GAO. Since GAO has up to 100 days to sustain or deny a protest, a company could not wait and use the court as a backstop if it loses its case at GAO.
Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsradio.com/defense-main/2018/05/pentagon-seeks-to-limit-bid-protests-in-federal-court/
Vendors that don’t like the results of a contract award will have to go online to take up their beef up with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) starting next month.
GAO on Thursday announced its plans to launch the electronic bid protest docketing system, a web portal where groups can securely file protests to federal contract awards. Vendors will be required to submit all new protests through EPDS beginning May 1.
“This new system modernizes the bid protest process at GAO and will make it a much more efficient process,” said Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who heads the congressional watchdog agency, in a statement.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/04/all-bid-protests-must-be-submitted-online-starting-may/147257/
The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) new Bid Protest Regulations, effective May 1, 2018, are at: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/04/02/2018-06413/government-accountability-office-administrative-practice-and-procedure-bid-protest-regulations
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2018 includes some significant changes affecting contractors, particularly with regard to challenges to requests for proposals and contract awards, otherwise known as “bid protests.”
The key bid protest changes in the new NDAA are: the introduction of a new pilot program under which large defense contractors will be required to pay the Defense Department’s costs where a protest is denied; and the enhancement of post-award debriefing rights.
While Congress passed the former with the intent of reducing frivolous protests, it is likely the latter — which will give contractors greater insight into the rationale behind procurement decisions — that will have a greater impact on the number of protests filed.
Section 827 of the act requires that the department establish and implement a three-year pilot program under which “large” defense contractors will be required to reimburse the department for “costs incurred in processing covered protests” for protests “denied in an opinion” by the Government Accountability Office.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2018/3/6/contractors-face-changes-to-bid-protest-strategies
Submitting the winning bid is an exhilarating feeling, dimmed only by the following days, as the offeror waits to hear if others may file a protest.
Once a protest is filed, offerors options are limited.
One option that is available to offerors, but often ignored is the right to hire qualified counsel to represent their interests. Government contract attorneys are in a unique position, in that, while they are ethically obligated to protect their client’s interests, they are prohibited from discussing certain information with their clients. This frustrates offerors, and limits an attorney’s opportunities to provide valuable information about how things might have been different, had the offeror only done something different.
Keep reading this article at: https://www.bidprotestweekly.com/five-factors-for-proposal-evaluation-creating-bids-that-will-survive-a-protest/
There is no question that procurement regulations give agencies significant discretion at every step of the procurement process, and protesters often have a hard row to hoe to overcome the agency’s exercise of that discretion.
However, agencies often make that task easier by failing to provide full and logical explanations of their decisions that show they have considered all the relevant facts in light of the competing goals of the procurement system, not just the agency’s objective.
The following cases from August illustrate this point.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=629184
The exceptional nature of a contract protest case was demonstrated in a recent decision made by the Court of Federal Claims (COFC).
In the case, Starry Associates, Inc. v. United States, the COFC awarded “enhanced” attorney fees to plaintiff’s counsel due to the agency’s cancellation of the solicitation which the court characterized as “capricious” and “reflect[ing] a lack of fidelity to the procurement process.”
The contract’s cancellation resulted in multiple GAO protests, a hearing at GAO, multiple depositions of agency officials during a follow-on protest at the Court, and a decision enjoining the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) from cancelling the solicitation
Read about this rare rebuke of a federal agency by the COFC at: https://www.insidegovernmentcontracts.com/2017/04/cofc-awards-enhanced-attorney-fees-in-protest-following-egregious-agency-conduct/
Every government contractor that files a bid protest has the same goal in mind – corrective action. The agency made a procurement error and changes need to be made.
But just because the agency takes corrective action does not mean it will be the corrective action your firm wants. Contractors should take the time to consider the possible outcomes of a successful bid protest before filing.
Take, for example, the recent U.S. Court of Federal Appeals decision denying a protest over corrective action. In that case, an unsuccessful offeror successfully protested a United States Transportation Command non-temporary storage contract. In response to the protest, the agency took corrective action and started the process of re-evaluating all offerors in order to make a new award decision.
But this was not the corrective action the protestor expected. Because the protest argued that the original awardee’s proposal was technically deficient, the protestor wanted the government to cancel the first award and make a new award decision (in its favor) without further evaluation.
The Court rejected the idea that a protester can limit the agency’s authority to correct evaluation errors. To the contrary, the decision holds that it is within the agency’s discretion to review its prior conclusions and conduct a re-evaluation (provided that the new evaluation conforms to the solicitation and is fair to all offerors).
So is the takeaway that your firm shouldn’t file a protest unless it knows it will receive the award?
Keep reading this article at: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=531868
Citing an abuse of the protest process, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has suspended a company’s right to file bid protests for a period of one year.
The GAO’s unusual action was taken after the contractor in question filed 150 bid protests in the ongoing fiscal year alone, most of which have been dismissed for technical reasons. The GAO’s decision also cites “baseless accusations” made by the protester, including accusing GAO officials of being “white collar criminals” and asserting that “various federal officials have engaged in treason.”
The GAO’s decision in Latvian Connection LLC, B-413442 (Aug. 18, 2016) arose under a task order issued by DISA to ManTech Advanced Information Systems, Inc. for engineering services.
Keep reading this article at: http://smallgovcon.com/gaobidprotests/150-protests-and-counting-gao-suspends-frequent-protester/#more-5758
