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SmallGovCon Week in Review: January 13-17, 2025

Happy Friday! We hope you had a great week. We are already halfway through January and looking forward to see if the Chiefs can finish the three-peat! The federal landscape has been busy, with updates spanning Buy America, small business dollars, and procurement complications, including Polaris protests. You can read more about these topics in the articles below. Have a great weekend! Buy America Requirements for Manufactured Products GSA awards $210 million contract for new e

Event! MyGovWatch Live: The B2G Roundtable, January 22, 2025, 12:00pm CDT

If you’re interested in winning more B2G business through the bid process, but need some answers, join this live forum and talk about this market with people who have helped hundreds of companies win government contracts. This month’s co-hosts are Koprince McCall Pottroff’s own Nicole Pottroff and Stephanie Ellis. The event host, Nick Bernardo, President & Founder of MyGovWatch.com, has over 20 years of experience helping companies of all sizes figure out how to find, compete for, and ac

SmallGovCon Week in Review: January 6-10, 2025

It’s Friday and time for another week in review! We hope you have had a great week and are safe from the extreme weather conditions the country seems to be experiencing right now. We are still digging out from the blizzard sent our way by the polar vortex. We also hope that our readers in California are safe and well. Our thoughts go out to all of you that are dealing with those devastating wildfires. This week in federal government contracting news had some interesting stories including wi

Govology Webinar: An Introduction to Government Small Business Certifications (2025 Update), January 21, 2025, 1:00 pm EST

Steven Koprince, Govology legal analyst and retired founder of Koprince McCall Pottroff will be presenting this webinar. In this course he provides a big-picture overview of small business certifications in the government marketplace and you will learn about various federal small business certification programs, including Small Business Self Certification, Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB) & 8(a), Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB), H

Game Changers for Government Contractors: Understanding the Small Business Rule of Two

Thanks to Michael LeJeune for hosting me on his podcast, Game Changers for Government Contractors. It’s always great talking to Michael and this is a very pertinent topic for a lot of contractors. The Rule of Two is undergoing some changes in proposed rules and federal contractors need to be aware of those changes. In this episode, I discuss what the Rule of Two is, how it impacts small business set-asides, and the recent changes affecting task orders under multiple award contracts (MACs). We al

Year in Review: Top SmallGovCon Posts of 2024

Happy New Year, SmallGovCon readers! As we look forward to the new updates, decisions, and commentary in 2025, it’s also a good time to reflect on the important and well-read posts from 2024. This post revisits our most popular blog posts from 2024. Below, we summarize the blogs written in 2024 that were the most visited as well as the perennial favorites from years past that were the most viewed in 2024. It’s a good chance to look back on the important articles from 2024, and those topics o

Less Extraordinary: Revised SBA Rule Gives Clear Guidance on Extraordinary Circumstances

Many of the SBA’s small business programs have restrictions on what are commonly referred to as “extraordinary circumstances” or “extraordinary actions.” It’s a topic that we have discussed many times before, including this blog post discussing a case at SBA’s Office of Hearings and Appeals, reviewing extraordinary circumstances in the context of control and operating agreements. SBA often discusses extraordinary circumstances in the context of joint venture control, where the managing venturer

SmallGovCon Week in Review: December 30-January 3, 2025

Happy Friday and Happy New Year to all of our SmallGovCon readers! We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and are looking forward to 2025. As we look forward to the new year and close out the old, there are sure to be lots of developments in the federal contracting space. So, as you batten down the hatches for the polar vortex, it’s time for a nice, warm fire, maybe some hot cocoa and the latest in federal contracting news. Stories included a new law on custom software, and rules on

A Glitch In Time? GAO Denies Late Proposal Protest for Lack of Systemic Outages with Agency System 

Both GAO and the federal agencies take proposal deadlines with the utmost seriousness. We have discussed a few other examples of late proposals being denied by GAO before. Now, we have another one. This time, the protester put forth the argument that its lateness was not its fault. Rather, it was caused by issues with the agency’s proposal receipt system. Unfortunately for the protester, GAO did not accept this argument. Here, we will go into how it arrived at that decision.  In NAG Mari

Happy Holidays to All, Big and Small, from SmallGovCon!

Happy Holidays from all of us at SmallGovCon. Throughout the year, we’ve enjoyed bringing you the best updates and analysis out there for small business federal contractors and their partners. We wish all of you a great end to 2024 and have a great holiday season! The post Happy Holidays to All, Big and Small, from SmallGovCon! first appeared on SmallGovCon - Government Contracts Law Blog.View the full article

Strategies for Dealing with a Government Shutdown

Shuttering of the government (or parts of the government) following appropriations lapses has become an increasingly common phenomenon in recent times. Continuing resolutions have become a recurring stopgap measure. Funding lapses interrupt the usual predictability of government operations, which harms both agencies and federal contractors that are left in limbo with stop work orders. Unfortunately, unlike many other topics, the FAR has little say when it comes to procedures for contractors

SmallGovCon Week in Review: December 16-20, 2024

Hello, blog readers! Well, everyone is on pins and needles to see if the federal government will face a shut down. As you may have heard, the House rejected the proposed government funding, so now we wait to see if the third proposal will be agreed upon today to keep things going. Stay tuned! In other news, our office is very excited about the Bluey movie–can’t wait for 2027! And now, more on that and other news from the federal government, including cybersecurity updates, AI, and updates to

No Protesting Canceled Contracts, Says COFC

Often contractors will protest an award, then learn that the contract at issue was cancelled by the government due to corrective action. When that occurs, contractors of course feel as if their concerns were not resolved, or the protested other parties were let off the proverbial hook. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims recently explained that if that happens, there is no procurement left to protest, even if there are related research and development projects or actions continuing within the Gover

News Flash: SBA Releases Final HUBZone Rule Update, Other Small Business Changes

SBA will be releasing the final rule for the HUBZone Program Updates and Clarifications, and Clarifications to Other Small Business Programs on December 17, 2024. As we have discussed, this rule made a lot of changes to the HUBZone program. But it also updated a lot of other small business rules. Below are the details on some of these significant changes. This rule will be effective on January 16, 2025. For an overview of the proposed rule, check out this post. Here are some of the main

SmallGovCon Week in Review: December 9-13, 2024

Hello and happy Friday! We’ve been getting some chilly temperatures here in the Midwest and it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. The lights are up downtown and the city is looking very festive! We hope you are enjoying the holiday season in your neck of the woods. We also finished up our last webinar of the season, the 2024 Government Contracting Year-End Review with Govology. Check it out to learn all the updates from 2024 to get ready for 2025. This week in federal government cont

NAICS Code Appeal: OHA Says Agency’s Assignment of Code Doesn’t Have to be Perfect

When a contractor believes an agency assigned the wrong North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code to a solicitation, it can file an appeal with the SBA’s Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA). However, for OHA to correct the NAICS code, the contractor must show the contracting officer’s assignment was clearly erroneous. As we’ve discussed, counting just those NAICS code appeals decided on the merits, about 45% were granted, per a GAO report.  In recent NAICS appeal Dellew

SBA Issues Final Rule to Streamline WOSB Program Rules

In June, we reported on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that applied to the SBA’s Woman-Owned Small Business/Economically Disadvantaged Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB) regulations. These proposed rules were intended to take the WOSB regulations and make them more consistent with the other types of set-aside programs offered by the SBA. Now, following the required period for comments from the general public, the SBA has published its Final Rule which will be effective January 3, 2025. Read ahea

SmallGovCon Week in Review: December 2-6, 2024

Happy December! How’s the holiday shopping going so far? It seems the shopping time is even shorter than ever with Thanksgiving being so late this year. Oh boy! And the calendar is busy with so many events happening in December, it’s difficult to choose. This Saturday is the 24th annual Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade here in Lawrence, Kansas, featuring horse drawn buggies. We also hope you have some fun holiday plans this weekend and try not to stress about that shopping list. But the federa

Govology Webinar: December 12, 2024 – The 2024 Government Contracting Year-End Review

Please join Nicole Pottroff and me for this informative webinar, where we will discuss important new small business rules and updates, changes to 8(a) Program certification, joint venture modifications, HUBZone certification updates (including the new extensive HUBZone proposed rule), key provisions of the most recent National Defense Authorization Act, recent cases relevant to federal contractors, and more. This is always a great way to end the calendar year in federal contracting. Registe

Proposed Increases to Micro-Purchase, Simplified Acquisition, and Other Thresholds

Every five years, the government is required by 41 U.S.C. § 1908 to adjust the statutory acquisition thresholds for inflation, such as the Micro-Purchase Threshold, Simplified Acquisition Threshold, and others. It just so happens that the last such adjustment occurred back in 2020. As such, the government is once again looking to increase these thresholds in light of the inflation that has occurred over the past five years. In this post, we will look at the proposed increases. Read more: Prop

Thank you, SmallGovCon Readers!

On behalf of our attorney-authors at SmallGovCon, I wanted to take this opportunity to express our gratitude for all of our loyal blog readers. We love that SmallGovCon is such a great resource for contractors and professions in the federal contracting space. We appreciate your feedback. Keep sending us your questions and we will keep improving SmallGovCon to make it useful for our readers! We hope you have a wonderful holiday enjoying time with family and friends. Thank you so much! The po

2024 GAO Bid Protest Report: Numbers Down, Effectiveness Still Even Odds

As we look forward to fall traditions like turkey and mashed potatoes, pumpkin spice, and leaf peeping, don’t sleep on another fall tradition, the GAO bid protest report. This report is GAO’s summary of bid protests for the previous fiscal year. It contains some important insights for how GAO bid protest numbers have changed from prior years. Of course, many bid protests are filed at the Court of Federal Claims, so this is only one part of the picture. Here are some key points from this yea

GovCon FAQs: Do I need an SBA MPA for a JV?

We at SmallGovCon are excited to announce this first in a new line of blogs we call GovCon FAQs. Our firm handles a wide variety of federal procurement and contract matters, from bid protests, size protests, joint ventures, socio-economic certifications, to everything in between. Often, when talking to blog readers and contracts we hear the same sort of questions pop up. Of course, we can only provide direct legal advice to our clients. But many of these questions hit on issues that face contrac