A common misconception in government contracting is that to be eligible under a particular solicitation, a small business must have the solicitation’s assigned NAICS code listed under its SBA System for Award Management (“SAM”) profile.
Not so. GAO, in a recent decision, affirmed this misconception to be false—it found that an awardee’s failure to list the assigned NAICS code under its SAM profile did not make its proposal technically unacceptable.
Veterans Electric, LLC, B-413198 (Aug. 26,
Federal contractors frequently find themselves in the position of needing to establish their past performance credentials to secure future contracts – the government’s form of a reference check. The government often performs these reference checks by requesting completed past performance questionnaires, or PPQs, which the government uses as an indicator of the offeror’s ability to perform a future contract.
But what happens when a contractor’s government point of contact fails to return a compl
You’ve hit send on that electronic proposal, hours before the deadline and now you can sit back and feel confident that you’ve done everything in your power – at least it won’t be rejected as untimely – right?
Not so fast. If an electronically submitted proposal gets delayed, the proposal may be rejected–even if the delay could have been caused by malfunctioning government equipment. In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO continued a recent pattern of ruling against protesters whose electron
Generally speaking, government contractors know that part of the cost of doing business with the federal government is some loss of autonomy. The government writes the rules. It is the 500 lb. gorilla. What it says usually goes.
When contractors try to do things their own way–even in an relatively informal medium such as email–they can sometimes get into trouble, as evidenced by a recent GAO protest decision: Bluehorse Corp., B-414809 (Aug. 18, 2017).
The protest involved a procurement for d
Your company has submitted a proposal for a Lowest-Priced, Technically Acceptable acquisition. To your surprise, you find out another company has submitted a technically acceptable offer with the same price. Equally surprising, the solicitation does not contain any provisions instructing the agency on how to pick from otherwise equal bids. So what is the contracting officer to do – issue an order for a standoff, a la the O.K. Corral? (For the record, we do not advise this as a viable method of c
Have you ever felt like you were screaming into the void when submitting your comments to a proposed rule in the Federal Register? That your well thought out comments were being drowned out by a mass of other comments on a proposed rule or attributed to someone else? Have you wondered what agencies do with all that information you send them when you submit a comment on a proposed rule? Well, GAO seems to have the same questions and concerns regarding the proposed rule comments process and has ta
SBA’s regulations for service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses create a rebuttable presumption that a service-disabled veteran doesn’t control the company if the veteran is unable to work normal business hours in the company’s industry.
The rule sounds reasonable at first blush, but as a recent SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals case demonstrates, the SBA may apply the presumption even to a one-person start-up with no contracts. Not many people can afford to quit their day jobs bef
If a contracting officer determines that a small business offeror is not qualified to perform under a solicitation, that usually means the offeror’s proposal will be rejected. In some instances, however, the offeror gets a second chance through the SBA’s Certificate of Competency (“COC”) program.
Here are five things you should know about the COC program.
1. What rules govern the COC program?
The Small Business Act, specifically 15 U.S.C. § 637(b)(7), introduces us to the COC p
The breadth and depth of protests heard by GAO may lead even a seasoned government contractor to overlook the limitations of GAO’s jurisdiction.
As one contractor recently found, the GAO generally will not consider
protests based on an allegation that the agency should not have referred an
adverse responsibility determination to the SBA for a certificate of competency
review.
We must lay the foundation for the Certificate of Competency (“COC”)
procedure before adequately analyzing t
As we have previously noted on the blog, a substantial number of protests filed before GAO end in voluntary corrective action taken by the protested agency. In recent decision, GAO addressed just how much discretion agencies have in designing corrective actions.
Spoiler alert: it’s a lot.
RTW Management, B-416786.2 (Comp. Gen. Dec. 17, 2018) involved a VA procurement for shuttle transportation services around its healthcare facilities in Maryland. As relevant here, the solicitation
Under FAR Part 15 negotiated procurements, an agency must give notice and an opportunity to request a debriefing to offerors eliminated from the competitive range. But the notice requirement does not apply for task and delivery order procurements under FAR Part 16 where FAR Part 15 is inapplicable.
A recent GAO decision highlights this distinction.
The Department of Education issued multiple solicitations to meet IT requirements. One RFQ, the PIVOT H solicitation, was for hosting of applicat
I am back in Lawrence after a great trip to Huntsville, Alabama, where I spoke at the Redstone Edge Conference. My presentation focused on the recent major developments in small business contracting, including the changes to the limitations on subcontracting and the new universal mentor-protege program.
Many thanks to Courtney Edmonson, Scott Butler, Michael Steen, and the rest of the team at Redstone Government Consulting for putting together this impressive event and inviting me to participa
The government can terminate a contract when the Department of Labor has made a preliminary finding of non-compliance with the Service Contract Act, even if the contractor has not exhausted its remedies fighting or appealing the finding.
The 3-0 (unanimous) decision by the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals in Puget Sound Environmental Corp., ASBCA No. 58828 (July 12, 2016) is troubling because it could result in other contractors losing their contracts based on preliminary DOL findings–p
Picture this scenario: the government hires your company to do a job; you assign one of your best employees to lead the effort. He or she does such a good job that the government hires your employee away. The government then drags its feet on approving your proposed replacement and refuses to pay you for the time when the position was not staffed–even though the contract was fixed-price.
The scenario is exactly what happened to a company called Financial & Realty Services (FRS), and acc
President Obama signed the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act into law on December 23, 2016. As is often the case, the NDAA included many changes affecting government contractors.
Here at SmallGovCon, my colleagues and I have been following the 2017 NDAA closely. Here’s a roundup of all 16 posts we’ve written about the government contracting provisions of the 2017 NDAA.
SDVOSB Programs: 2017 NDAA Sharply Curtails VA’s Authority. (Dec. 5, 2016).
2017 NDAA Restricts DoD’s Use of LPT
The SBA is processing the typical “All Small” Mentor-Protege Program application in a lightning-fast eight days.
Speaking at the National 8(a) Association 2017 Small Business Conference, John Klein, the SBA’s Associate General Counsel for Procurement Law, confirmed that All Small mentor-protege agreements are being processed very quickly. I was in the audience this morning for Mr. Klein’s comments, which also included many other interesting nuggets on the SBA’s new All Small Mentor-Protege Pr
The VA cannot buy products or services using the AbilityOne List without first applying the “rule of two” and determining whether qualified SDVOSBs and VOSBs are available to bid.
Today’s decision of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in PDS Consultants, Inc. v. United States, No. 16-1063C (2017) resolves–in favor of veteran-owned businesses–an important question that has been lingering since Kingdomware was decided nearly one year ago. The Court’s decision in PDS Consultants makes clear that at
A contractor was awarded more than $31,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs after a government agency unjustifiably refused to pay the contractor’s $6,000 claim–forcing the contractor to go through lengthy legal processes to get reimbursed.
A recent decision of the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals is a cautionary tale for government contracting officials, a few of whom seem inclined to play hardball with low-dollar claims, even when those claims are entirely justified.
The CBCA’s decision in K
The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has generated lots of headlines regarding the so-called “Amazon amendment” and the Act’s prohibition on the Russian IT company Kaspersky Labs products. But gone under reported is a huge change to how the government makes small purchases.
The 2018 NDAA, signed by President Donald Trump on December 12, increases the standard micro-purchase threshold applicable to civilian agencies from $3,000 to $10,000. Last year, the NDAA increased the Departme
The Air Force’s large NETCENTS-2 IDIQ vehicle did not require orders to be set-aside under the small business pool, except for orders valued between the micro-purchase threshold and simplified acquisition threshold.
In a recent decision, the GAO held that although the NETCENTS-2 contract in question says that Contracting Officers “should” perform a “rule of two” small business set-aside analysis for orders valued over the simplified acquisition threshold, it does not require that such an analys
Everyone involved with government contracting knows, or should know, a little bit about registration in SAM.gov. Registration is now required for ALL federal contractors at the time they submit bids.
This blog post provides you with 5 things you should know about registering in SAM.gov.
1. Your Username is Permanent; your Password is not.
Like diamonds, your SAM.gov Username is forever. In other words, your Username cannot be changed or duplicated by anyone else ever (even if
For most Americans, tax season is happily behind them and Memorial Day festivities signaled the start of summer. A recent GAO report, however, may give cause for some federal contractors to revisit their tax policies before lighting up the grill next weekend.
Contracting Officers are required to take in a wealth of information prior to awarding a contract. One piece of information each contracting officer is supposed to review is the tax status of offerors. If an offeror is delinquent in pay
In the classic 1993 movie Gettysburg, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, a great American hero (played by Jeff Daniels), commented on the power wielded by military commanders, particularly generals: “Generals can do anything. Nothing quite so much like God on Earth as a general on a battlefield.”
It turns out that this this power extends to actions that might affect your Government contract. For instance, a base commander can revoke a contractor’s access to the base; if that happens, and the contra
No, the government isn’t trying to figure out how it can bundle home and auto coverage to save on its insurance premiums. Instead, “consolidation” in the federal government contract context refers to the action of collecting requirements being performed under discrete small business set-aside contracts into a single procurement. Before an agency may consolidate contracts, it must consider the impacts the proposed consolidation will have on small business participation. Recently, however, GAO was
As we wrote about, the Section 809 Panel had recommended that Congress eliminate most small business set-asides for DoD acquisitions. The Panel suggested replacing small business set-asides with a five percent small business price preference. It looks like Congress heard our concerns—and those voiced throughout industry—and will reject this suggestion.
As Steven Koprince wrote, the recommendation was questionable for a number of reasons. For one, it didn’t accurately describe the current
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