Small Business Set-Asides are Themselves “Competitive.”
If the law requires competitive bidding for a government contract, and an agency designates a contract as one for small businesses only, does the removal of large businesses from the contracting pool itself render the solicitation non-competitive? The Court of...
Contractor Wins Bid Protest for a Second Time Because Agency Doesn’t Document Its Decisionmaking
A government contractor wins its second bid protest in a row at the Court of Federal Claims. In this latest instance, it won because the agency, the Army, failed to document its evaluation and came across to the Court as...
Contractor Wins Contract Despite “Cribbing” a Proprietary Staffing Plan from a Competitor
Your Recruiting Company, Inc. (“YRC”) and Golden Key Group, L.L.C. had once been in a joint venture together. As is common in such relationships, they agreed to share proprietary data, subject to a nondisclosure agreement. Subsequently, both companies bid on...
Agency Successfully In-Sources Work with Minimal Savings; Incumbent Contractor Loses Bid Protest
The concept of “timing is everything” applies to most things in life. With the rapid changes of government contracting law, the concept is particularly applicable to bid protests. Dellew Corporation was a long-time incumbent contractor for the Air Force. It...
Federal Appeals Court Denies Trademark for the Word “!@#$%^&*()”
It is not often that a federal appellate court will write one of George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” over a dozen times in a published legal opinion — often in all capital letters. However, in a US Court of Appeals...
A Contract Modification Doesn’t Get Rebid Unless it is a Cardinal Change
American Apparel, Inc., along with Bluewater Defense, Inc. provides coats and other all-weather clothing to the United States Defense Logistics Agency under a government contract. The Agency wanted to purchase additional apparel not specifically listed in the contract via a...
Court yanks award to disabled workers who clearly couldn’t do the work.
In an example of good intentions over common sense, the Army pulled a particularly hazardous, physical contract from an incumbent contractor, Systems Application & Technologies, Inc. (Sa-Tech), and gave it instead to a company with zero experience but promising to...
Bid Protest Denied Where Contractor Failed to Protest Before the Award
Timing is everything in law. In Plott Bakery Products, the government contractor complained that the Defense Logistics Agency failed to award her business a contract for their Meal, Ready-to-Eat Ration Program. Unfortunately, she complained about items in the solicitation that...
Company loses its right to argue bid protest because it did not file in advance of the award.
The only thing worse than losing a bid protest is losing because you waited too long to file — a lesson painfully learned by a disappointed government contractor. COMINT Systems Corp and EyeIT filed a bid protest against the Department...