Topic Archives: Protests & Litigation

December 1, 2021 – Protests & Litigation

GAO Finds CIO-SP4 Solicitation Is Unduly Restrictive of Competition

The Chief Information Officer-Solutions and Partners 4 (CIO-SP4) procurement of the National Institutes of Health’s Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC) has garnered a great deal of attention. With confusion over evaluation criteria, a string of last-minute solicitation amendments and reversals, short extensions of the rushed due dates for proposals, and a series of major ...›

November 23, 2021 – Protests & Litigation

Subcontractor Data Rights Challenges: A Need For Clarity

MoFo’s Jay DeVecchio and Locke Bell recently published an article in Thomson Reuters’ The Government Contractor. The article, titled, “Subcontractor Data Rights Challenges: A Need For Clarity,” offers practical advice about how subcontractors should handle a DoD technical data validation challenge in light of contradictory and confusing provisions in the data validation clauses. The article can ...›

November 10, 2021 – Protests & Litigation

OCTOBER 2021 BID PROTEST ROUNDUP

This month’s Law360 Bid Protest Roundup features three cases from the Court of Federal Claims (COFC). The court’s decisions provide important insights into bid protest standing, challenges to Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) decisions under bid protest jurisdiction, and the significance of timely filing requests for intervention. Aero Spray In multiple-award indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contracts, parties ...›

October 6, 2021 – Protests & Litigation

September 2021 Bid Protest Roundup

This month’s Law360 Bid Protest Roundup focuses on one recent U.S. Court of Federal Claims decision, as well as two Government Accountability Office (GAO) decisions. All three involve solicitations issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), but each serves as a different, important reminder for disappointed offerors seeking to have their own protests sustained. Land Shark Shredding[1] In Land ...›

October 5, 2021 – Protests & Litigation

Where Can You Protest an Other Transaction Award? Insights from Kinemetrics

As federal agencies, and the Department of Defense in particular, increasingly allocate greater amounts of their annual budgets to nontraditional contracting arrangements generally known as other transactions (“OTs”) or other transaction agreements (“OTAs”), a common question continues to come up: “We just lost a significant OTA competition; can we file a bid protest?” The answer to this ...›

September 9, 2021 – Protests & Litigation

Waivers of Minor Informalities, Meaningful Discussions, and a “Dreary Wreck” of a Procurement (August 2021 Bid Protest Roundup)

In this month’s Law360 Bid Protest Roundup, we consider three decisions released in August 2021. In the first case, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) considered and rejected a protester’s argument that an agency was required to waive or allow the offeror to correct a minor informality that the agency determined made its proposal ineligible for award. In the ...›

August 13, 2021 – Protests & Litigation

Proposed Rule for Tightening Buy American Act Restrictions

We previously commented on one aspect of the Trump Administration’s America-First policies that the Biden Administration has embraced wholeheartedly: doubling down on domestic preferences in Federal procurements. Consistent with the previous and current administrations’ policies, the FAR Councils recently released a proposed rule to tighten the screws even further on Buy American Act (BAA) regulations. Background Under the current rules, in ...›

August 11, 2021 – Protests & Litigation

JULY 2021 BID PROTEST ROUNDUP (LAW360 SPOTLIGHT)

This month’s Law360 Bid Protest Roundup examines three recent decisions from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The first two cases highlight splits between the court and the Government Accountability Office related to contract interpretation, price realism analyses and post hoc extensions of proposal deadlines. The third case takes an in-depth look at the bounds of sole-source awards. ...›

July 13, 2021 – Protests & Litigation

JUNE 2021 BID PROTEST ROUNDUP (LAW360 SPOTLIGHT)

This month’s Law360 Bid Protest Roundup starts on a promising note as courts begin opening their doors after months of restricted access due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  This Roundup covers decisions addressing the Blue and Gold Fleet rule, recovery of protest costs at the GAO, unequal treatment, and agency responsibilities when inadvertently disclosing proprietary pricing ...›

June 8, 2021 – Protests & Litigation

May 2021 Bid Protest Roundup (Law360 Spotlight)

This month’s Bid Protest Roundup (featured on Law360) examines three recent decisions by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Court of Federal Claims (COFC). The first, Tridentis, LLC[1], highlights the importance of submitting a sufficiently clear proposal; the second, M R Pittman Group, LLC[2], reminds contractors to timely protest patent ambiguities in solicitations before the proposal submission ...›