Populated joint ventures will no longer be permitted in the SBA’s small business programs, under a new regulation set to take effect on August 24, 2016.
The SBA’s major new rule, officially issued today in the Federal Register, will be best known for implementing the long-awaited small business mentor-protege program. But the rule also makes many other important changes to the SBA’s small business programs, including the elimination of populated joint ventures.
Under current law, a joint ve
For Federal Supply Schedule procurements, agencies are not required to evaluate past performance references of subcontractors, unless the solicitation provides otherwise.
As one offeror recently discovered in Atlantic Systems Group, Inc., B-413901 (Jan. 9, 2017), unlike negotiated procurements, where agencies “should” evaluate the past performance of subcontractors that will perform major or critical aspects of the contract, offerors bidding under FSS solicitations should not assume that a subc
When an agency performs a cost realism evaluation under a solicitation involving significant labor costs, the agency must evaluate offerors’ proposed rates of employee compensation, not just offerors’ fully burdened labor rates.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO held that an agency erred by basing its realism evaluation on offerors’ fully burdened labor rates, without considering whether the direct rates of compensation were sufficient to recruit and retain qualified personnel.
The G
When you hear “15 days,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Perhaps, you pay your employees every 15 days. Maybe your birthday or favorite holiday happens to be in 15 days. Or if you’re like me, you might think that 15 days is two days less than Thirteen Days, a great movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Whatever your brain conjures up, don’t forget this: 15 days is the time limit to appeal an SBA size determination. Period. And nothing the contracting officer says can change it.
A re
The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act restores the GAO’s recently-expired jurisdiction to hear protests of civilian task and delivery orders valued in excess of $10 million.
The 2017 NDAA also continues to allow the GAO to hear protests of DoD task and delivery orders–but raises the jurisdictional threshold to $25 million.
As we blogged about in November, the GAO’s authority to hear bid protests in connection with civilian task and delivery orders expired on September 30, 2016. Even th
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
When an agency takes corrective action in response to a bid protest, the agency voluntarily agrees to do something (such as re-evaluate proposals, re-open discussions, or even cancel a solicitation) to address the alleged problems identified in the protest. Corrective actions are quite common: in FY 2016, more than 23% of GAO bid protests resulted in corrective actions.
But what happens when a protester doesn’t like the scope of the agency’s proposed corrective action? As a recent GAO decision
When issues arise in performance of a federal contract, a contractor may seek redress from the government by filing a claim with the contracting officer. However, commencing such a claim may result in an exercise of patience and waiting by the contractor.
The Contract Disputes Act, as a jurisdictional hurdle for claims over $100,000, requires a contractor to submit a “certified claim” to the agency. The CDA also requires the contracting officer, within sixty days of receipt of a certified claim
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
Effective March 17, DOD contracting officers won’t have to issue a justification or obtain approval for award of a sole-source contract under the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program for awards up to $100 million, up from the prior $22 million limit. This Department of Defense class deviation implements the higher dollar amount that Congress set in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. This change will only matter for 8(a) concerns owned by an Indian Tribe, Alaska Native Corporati
The government’s hard shift away from lowest-price, technically acceptable evaluations has magnified the importance of past performance in many competitive acquisitions. For start-ups and other companies new to the federal marketplace, past performance requirements can present a significant barrier to success.
Oftentimes, companies with little or no past performance of their own can offer the past performance of another entity, such as a subcontractor or joint venture partner. But the rule
An agency isn’t required to cancel a small business set-aside solicitation if the agency learns that one of the small businesses upon whom the set-aside decision rested is no longer small.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO confirmed that an agency need not redo its “rule of two” determination when a potential small business competitor outgrows its size standard–even if it could effectively convert a particular solicitation into a “rule of one.”
The GAO’s decision in Synchrogenix Info
Let’s say you’re a subcontractor to a prime contractor, which holds a construction contract with the Government. And you run into problems which need to be solved by submitting a claim to the contracting officer. But, as the subcontractor, you don’t have a contractual relationship (privity of contract, in legal speak) with the Government. Can you still submit the claim?
As a procedural matter, the answer is yes–under certain conditions. In fact, the ASBCA confirmed this in a recent case,
There’s not many people or organizations that can say they anticipated the spread of this pandemic disease that is confining million to their homes as part of stay in place orders and self quarantines.
Though the FAR Council did not foresee that the coronavirus and COVID-19 would trap contractors in their homes, it did anticipate that from time to time events completely out of the control of contractors may conspire to affect the performance of contracts—though perhaps not to this magnitude
Each party to a GSA Schedule Contractor Teaming Arrangement must hold the Federal Supply Schedule contract in question.
As demonstrated by a recent GAO bid protest decision, if one of the parties to the GSA CTA doesn’t hold the relevant FSS contract, the CTA may be found ineligible for award of an order under that contract.
The GAO’s decision in M Inc., d/b/a Minc Interior Design, B-413166.2 (Aug. 1, 2016) involved a VA RFQ for healthcare facility furniture and related services.
In all competitive procurements, agencies must identify and analyze, as soon as possible, whether a potential contractor has an actual or potential organizational conflict of interest. (OCIs come in three general varieties: unequal access to information, biased ground rules, and impaired objectivity.) If the agency finds one, it must avoid, neutralize, or mitigate the potential OCI to ensure fairness.
As one recent GAO decision illustrates, an agency’s failure to reasonably investigate a pot
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
I always knew my legal career would some day overlap with my love of terrible movies, before-they-were-stars trivia, and naval warfare. Today is that day.
When I saw that GAO had dismissed a “killer tomato” protest, several things came to mind. First, I thought, wait, are they talking about “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes“? Then I though, wait, wasn’t George Clooney in that—and didn’t he have a terrible 80’s mullet? Naturally, my curiosity got the best of me. I clicked.
The protest in questio
GAO typically affords agencies wide discretion to establish technical restrictions within solicitations.
In a recent decision, however, GAO confirmed that such discretion is not unbounded. When an agency’s technical restriction is unduly restrictive of competition, the GAO will sustain a bid protest.
Global SuperTanker Services, LLC, B-414987 et al., 2017 CPD ¶ 345 (Comp. Gen. Nov. 6, 2017) involved a Forest Service procurement for aerial firefighting aircraft to support the agency’s wildland
In evaluating proposals, an agency will sometimes use “adjectival ratings” (e.g., Excellent, Good, Acceptable) to describe its assessment of a proposal or portions of a proposal. But, importantly, an agency cannot evade its responsibility to reasonably evaluate proposals–based on the articulated evaluation criteria–by deferring solely to the assigned adjectival ratings.
In other words, if the agency doesn’t perform a true qualitative assessment, but instead relies on mere labels to make its
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
The 8(a) Program regulations will undergo some significant changes as part of the major final rule recently released by the SBA, and effective August 24, 2016.
Here at SmallGovCon, we’ve already covered big changes to the SDVOSB Program and HUBZone Program brought about by the new SBA rule. But the 8(a) program is affected by the new rule too, and important changes involving eligibility, the application process, sole source awards, NHOs, and more will kick in later this month.
The final rule
An SDVOSB set-aside contract was void–and unenforceable against the government–because the prime contractor had entered into an illegal “pass-through” arrangement with a non-SDVOSB subcontractor.
In a recent decision, the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals held that a SDVOSB set-aside contract obtained by misrepresenting the concern’s SDVOSB status was invalid from its inception; therefore, the prime contractor had no recourse against the government when the contract was later terminated for de
An Alaska Native Corporation subsidiary was not affiliated with its parent company and two sister companies under the ostensible subcontractor affiliation rule, even though the company in question would rely on the parent and sister companies for managerial personnel, financial assistance and bonding.
A recent decision of the SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals highlights the breadth of the exemption from affiliation enjoyed by ANC companies.
OHA’s decision in Size Appeal of Olgoonik Diversif
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
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