1. Home
  2. |Insights
  3. |Solicitation Must Adequately Evaluate Contract Type and Not Have Arbitrary Disqualifications

Solicitation Must Adequately Evaluate Contract Type and Not Have Arbitrary Disqualifications

Client Alert | 1 min read | 09.09.16

In CACI, Inc.-Federal (Aug. 3, 2016), GAO sustained two pre-award challenges to the cost/price evaluation scheme in DISA’s $17.5B ENCORE III IDIQ solicitation. GAO held, first, that the solicitation did not provide an adequate basis to compare the relative cost of competing proposals because, despite anticipating roughly half of the ENCORE III task orders to be cost-reimbursable, the RFP did not require offerors to propose any cost-reimbursable labor rates and, second, that a provision that would eliminate any offeror with a total price more than 50 percent below a “trimmed average total proposed price” of other offerors was “entirely arbitrary in selection and application” because the record did not reflect that such a price difference would pose any inherently high performance risk.

Contacts

Insights

Client Alert | 8 min read | 10.01.25

BIS Issues “Affiliates Rule” to Dramatically Expand Applicability of Entity and Military End-User Lists

On September 29, 2025, the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) announced a sweeping Interim Final Rule (IFR), (the “Affiliates Rule”) expanding which entities qualify as Entity List or Military End-User entities, thereby subjecting those entities to elevated export control restrictions under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). U.S. export restrictions applicable to entities on the Entity List, Military End-User (MEU) List, and Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN List) now apply to foreign affiliates that are, in the aggregate, owned 50% or more by one or more of the aforementioned entities. An entity that becomes subject to these restrictions because of its ownership structure will be subject to the most restrictive controls that attach to any of its parent entities, regardless of ownership stakes....

View All Insights