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DoD Renews Its Request to Limit CFC Bid Protest Jurisdiction Dramatically

Client Alert | 1 min read | 04.22.16

In its legislative proposal package sent to Congress on April 12, 2016, the DoD is again seeking to curtail the CFC’s bid protest jurisdiction significantly by importing nearly all of GAO’s rigid timeliness rules into the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1491(b), with the stated goals of “reducing the time to decide bid protests by avoiding unnecessarily repetitive protests” and eliminating an “unintended forum shopping practice that has arisen under the existing bid protest system[.]” For a detailed review of the similar DoD legislative proposal in 2012, see this post, where we explain why the proposed change, among other things, (1) will not fully address DoD’s “second bite at the apple” concerns, (2) will deny many prospective protesters a “first bite,” and (3) may have a significant effect on the types and numbers of protests filed in the GAO and the CFC.

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Client Alert | 4 min read | 10.30.26

Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right: GAO Sustains Protest Where Agency Tried to Fix PIA Violation with a Second PIA Violation

Recent sustain decisions by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in Fluor Federal Solutions, LLC and Reliance Test & Technology send a clear message: when an agency tries to fix a Procurement Integrity Act (PIA) violation by committing a second one, the cure can be just as fatal as the disease. The cases involved the U.S. Air Force’s $1.8 billion procurement for O&M services at Elgin Air Force Base. During discussions, the Air Force inadvertently released a pricing overview slide with all offerors’ bottom-line evaluated costs to Reliance Test & Technology, which immediately notified the agency of the error. In response, the Air Force decided to level the playing field by providing the same information to all the other offerors in the procurement, stating, “[o]fferors may consider this disclosure in their [final proposal revision].”...