By Adam K. Lasky on October 1, 2015 | Posted in Bid Protests
In a recent bid protest decision, Coulson Aviation (USA), Inc., the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) injected uncertainty regarding informal communications between a prospective offeror and the agency expressing concern about a solicitation provision. Unfortunately, this decision may punish contractors that seek to resolve concerns about a solicitation outside the protest […]
By Adam K. Lasky on January 9, 2015 | Posted in Legislative and Regulatory Developments
Back in September 2014, NASA awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to provide Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (aka space shuttle services) to transport astronauts to/from the International Space Station by 2017. Subsequently, Sierra Nevada, who submitted a proposal but was not awarded a contract, filed a protest at GAO challenging the […]
By Adam K. Lasky on November 24, 2014 | Posted in
In most litigation, the plaintiff and the defendant are equally susceptible to being sanctioned by the court for bad or dilatory behavior. However, government contracts litigation is not most litigation. In government contracts litigation (claims or protests), the contractor is more susceptible to being sanctioned than the government. But the government is […]
By Adam K. Lasky on November 21, 2014 | Posted in
Could a new generation of aircraft carriers change how future conflicts are fought from the sky? The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) aims to find out. This month, DARPA, the agency charged with developing new military technologies for the Department of Defense, issued a Request for Information (RFI) for “Distributed Airborne Capabilities,” or in other words […]
By Adam K. Lasky on November 19, 2014 | Posted in Bid Protests
Today, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued its annual report bid protest report to congress. The report shows a sharp decline in the rate of protests sustained by GAO. For several years the “sustain rate” at GAO had consistently hovered between 16% and 19%. Today’s report shows the “sustain […]
By Adam K. Lasky on October 30, 2014 | Posted in Bid Protests
In the world of GAO post-award bid protests, there are certain arguments that are particularly prevalent amongst sustained protests (such as the failure to follow the solicitation evaluation criteria, inadequate documentation of the source selection decision, unequal treatment of offerors, and unreasonable price or cost evaluation), and there are other arguments that while less prevalent […]
By Adam K. Lasky on October 29, 2014 | Posted in Bid Protests
It is not uncommon for a FAR Part 15 negotiated procurement to include a round of “Oral Presentations” in the proposal/evaluation process. Oral Presentations are permitted by FAR 15.102, and are usually used to augment the agency’s understanding of the written proposal. But at what point does the dialogue between […]
By Adam K. Lasky on October 7, 2014 | Posted in Bid Protests
In a rare move, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims (COFC) imposed sanctions on the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for its conduct during the bid protest of Coastal Environmental Group, Inc. v. United States. While the EPA ultimately prevailed on the merits of the protest, the EPA’s conduct was so egregious […]
By Adam K. Lasky on September 23, 2014 | Posted in Bid Protests
One might assume that if the top two proposals in a best-value procurement receive the same ratings on all non-price factors, the proposals are obviously equal in technical merit and the award must go to the lower priced proposal. However, this assumption would be incorrect. And, as GAO recently pointed […]
By Adam K. Lasky on July 2, 2014 | Posted in Small Business
One of the most fundamental requirements of Small Business Administration’s (SBA) size protest regulations is that the protested firm must timely produce information/documents that SBA requests to perform its investigation of the firm’s size/status. What is the penalty for failing to provide requested information/documents? SBA may presume the missing information would demonstrate that […]
By Adam K. Lasky on July 1, 2014 | Posted in Bid Protests
In a recent bid protest decision concerning the Department of Energy’s award of legacy management support services award contract, GAO held that the agency acted reasonably when evaluating protestor WSS’s past performance on the incumbent contract by disregarding two Contractor Performance Assessment Reports (“CPARs”), which reflected “exceptional” performance, in favor of […]
By Adam K. Lasky on June 7, 2014 | Posted in Bid Protests
Back in December 2013, GAO issued a protest decision involving a battle between the two private space contractors, Blue Origin and SpaceX, to lease Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A – where the majority of Apollo and Space Shuttle missions were launched – from NASA. Although the ultimate decision […]