Ambiguous Instructions Give Disqualified Offeror A Second Chance

The Court of Federal Claims in Heritage of Am., LLC v. U.S. (May 31, 2007) set aside a disqualification of an offeror when the solicitation instructions were unclear about the coverage and labor rates required in the multiple regions solicited, requiring a recompetition with unambiguous instructions. In the prior, related GAO protest, GAO had refused to consider this issue because it was "untimely," but Judge George Miller in this opinion joins the solid majority of the CFC judges holding that GAO timeliness requirements are inapplicable in court protests.