Bid Protests: Understanding the Process and the Key Issues

A special 1 & 1/2 day course on bid protests designed to assist contractors in identifying and understanding common procurement flaws, target issues of protests, and overall bid protest strategy.

How to recognize and identify flaws in a procurement and both protect your award decision and know when to challenge one. Challenges to a procurement are governed by a strict clock with very tight time constraints. Contractors must make immediate decisions on whether or not to file a protest. Yet, the decision to protest must not be taken lightly since it involves litigation against your customer. By understanding the issues that are frequent targets of protests and their likelihood of success, contractors can make more informed decisions to both challenge and defend contract award decisions.

This special course is designed to examine the bid protest process though a focus on the frequently litigated issues. It includes a practical analysis of recent case law developments and a discussion of lessons learned from the perspective of the disappointed bidder or offeror as well as the awardee. The course provides timely guidance on: strategic considerations in deciding whether or not and where to file a bid protest; recognition of protest issues; understanding the bid protest process and protective orders, and the remedies available to contractors. Applying the insight gained from protest decisions, with a focus on the most recent protest decision, to identify errors in the procurement process and to know when to challenge them are the reasons for this course. Coverage will include discussions of protests in such areas as:

• Solicitation defects
• Competitive range determinations
• Responsiveness and responsibility
• Failure to follow stated evaluation criteria
• Unequal treatment
• Flawed best-value determinations
• Unequal and lack of meaningful discussions
• Cost realism analyses
• Conflicts of interest
• Experience and past performance
• Small business issues
• Agency corrective action...and more.

This course is important to all contract professionals: contract administrators; accountants; engineers; executives; program managers; in-house counsel; among others — who must know how to spot or avoid potential protest issues and understand the protest process.

Through a blend of inductive and deductive methods, the faculty will examine the bid protest process through case decisions and an analysis of what has and has not worked in bid protest actions. This innovative approach will provide you with insight, guidance, and a methodology for developing your own strategies and guiding your decision-making. 

Crowell & Moring’s Amy E. Laderberg and Dan R. Forman will be conducting the special day and a half course on bid protests.