Topic Archives: Post-Award Protest Primer Series

July 24, 2018 – Post-Award Protest Primer Series

Corporate Transactions as a Basis for Protest (Post-Award Protest Primer #18)

Most corporate transactions go forward without protests.  Several prominent protest decisions over the last few years, however, have drawn attention to the complicated and sometimes unpredictable effect corporate transactions can have on pending procurements.  This uncertainty is exacerbated by the (often required) secrecy around pending transactions and the fact that potential corporate transactions may be ...›

June 6, 2018 – Post-Award Protest Primer Series

Unreasonableness And Lack Of Documentation (Post-Award Protest Primer #17)

Today’s installment of the post-award protest primer combines two frequent, related protest grounds:  (1) unreasonable evaluations and source selection decisions and (2) insufficient documentation.  In a future post, we’ll look more granularly at protest grounds best value tradeoffs in particular and the duties of source selection authorities.  Today, it’s all about reasonableness and documentation. Unreasonable ...›

May 16, 2018 – Post-Award Protest Primer Series

Bad Faith and Biased Procurement Officials (Post-Award Protest Primer #16)

We previously have referred in passing to Government bad faith as a protest ground that almost never is worth raising.  Today, we’ll address this rarely successful protest ground and discuss why it’s almost always a loser, as well as the rare circumstances in which it may lead to a sustained protest. When an offeror loses ...›

April 12, 2018 – Post-Award Protest Primer Series

Procurement Integrity Act Violations (Post-Award Protest Primer #15)

Offerors should, and generally do, carefully guard the confidentiality of their bid and proposal information.  And agencies that receive that information generally are careful to prevent its improper release, much as they guard against release of other source selection sensitive information.  The Procurement Integrity Act (PIA) governs aspects of the protection of this information, and ...›

March 23, 2018 – Post-Award Protest Primer Series

Bait-And-Switch And Unavailable Key Personnel (Post-Award Protest Primer #14)

The bait-and-switch in the salesman’s world involves enticing a prospective customer with an unbelievably good deal, only to switch it at the last moment with a bargain that is considerably less attractive to the buyer, and far more profitable for the seller. A version of the bait-and-switch exists in the world of bid protests, too.  ...›

January 4, 2018 – Post-Award Protest Primer Series

Organizational Conflicts of Interest (Post-Award Protest Primer #13)

Today we’ll consider Organizational Conflicts of Interest (OCIs) as a ground of protest.  The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) defines an OCI as a situation where “because of other activities or relationships with other persons, a person is unable or potentially unable to render impartial assistance or advice to the Government, or the person’s objectivity in ...›

December 5, 2017 – Post-Award Protest Primer Series

Discussions Vs. Clarifications Vs. Communications, And Agency Discretion (Post-Award Protest Primer #12)

In our last post, we looked at the most common protest grounds related to discussions:  lack of meaningful discussions, misleading discussions, and unequal discussions.  Today we’ll discuss how discussions differ from clarifications and pre-competitive range communications, as well as the Government’s discretion to conduct (or not conduct) such exchanges. Discussions, as we noted last time, ...›

November 13, 2017 – Post-Award Protest Primer Series

Non-Meaningful, Misleading, and Unequal Discussions (Post-Award Protest Primer #11)

Today’s post is the first of two installments on protest grounds related to discussions.  This post will focus on the requirement that discussions be meaningful and not misleading, and treat offerors equally.  The next post will look at the difference between discussions and other types of exchanges between agencies and offerors, as well as agencies’ ...›

October 25, 2017 – Post-Award Protest Primer Series

Unstated Evaluation Criteria And Waived Solicitation Requirements (Post-Award Protest Primer #10)

This week we’ll discuss two protest arguments that are, in some ways, two sides of the same coin:  unstated evaluation criteria and waived or relaxed solicitation requirements.  In each, the focus of the protest is on what was required (or not required) by the solicitation and whether the agency’s evaluation was consistent with the information ...›

September 28, 2017 – Post-Award Protest Primer Series

Latent Ambiguities and Non-Apparent Solicitation Defects (Post-Award Protest Primer #9)

Having discussed protest grounds you cannot or should not raise (here and here), we turn now to the first in a series of grounds that could result in a sustained protest: Latent Ambiguities and Non-Apparent Solicitation Defects. We’ve previously noted the rule that, to challenge the terms of a solicitation, a protester generally must do ...›