Insights

Washington – February 22, 2019: Crowell & Moring LLP is pleased to announce that its Government Contracts Group has been recognized as one of Law360’s “Practice Groups of the Year” for government contracts. This is the ninth consecutive year that the group has earned this honor.

On August 18, 2025, the Small Business Administration (SBA) published a notice of tribal consultation to be held in Michigan on September 17, 2025. In addition to seeking input from the Native American community on the management and operation of SBA’s Capital Access and Government Contracting and Business Development programs, SBA is focusing on the nonmanufacturer rule (NMR).

On August 7, 2025, the FAR Council issued a final rule amending FAR 52.204-7 to clarify that, effective immediately, an offeror’s failure to maintain continuous System for Award Management (SAM) registration between proposal submission and contract award does not render the offeror ineligible for award, so long as the offeror was registered in SAM at the time of proposal submission and is registered at the time of contract award. The final rule should address situations like TLS Joint Venture, LLC, B-422275, Apr. 1, 2024, 2024 CPD ¶ 74, where an offeror’s SAM registration lapsed for a single day between the proposal submission and award dates, and GAO found the offeror ineligible for award.

The deadlines for filing a GAO protest are short and strictly enforced.  In post-award protests, the general rule is that a company must file its protest within ten days of when the protester knows, or should have known, of its basis of protest.  However, GAO’s regulations provide an exception to this rule for “protests challenging a procurement conducted on the basis of competitive proposals under which a debriefing is requested and, when requested, is required”—in such a situation, “[the] protest shall not be filed before the debriefing date offered to the protester, but shall be filed not later than 10 days after the date on which the debriefing is held.”  4 CFR §21.2(a)(2).

Please join us on Wednesday, September 7, 2022 for a webinar on the newly implemented Small Business Administration (“SBA”) requirements for requesting, reporting, and relying on small business subcontractor past performance. With past performance already playing a key role in evaluations and award decisions, these new requirements are certain to shake up procurement dynamics, increase prime contractor administrative obligations, and generate a wave of new bid protest challenges.

Crowell & Moring will address individually small business size and each status that can be claimed in federal government contracting. We’ll cover: the eligibility requirements for each status; the certification process (if any); discussion of regulatory and statutory changes as well as any significant caselaw from 2021; and coming developments in 2022.

Crowell & Moring’s “All Things Protest” podcast keeps you up to date on major trends in bid protest litigation, key developments in high-profile cases, and best practices in state and federal procurement. In this episode, host Christian Curran and guests Zachary Schroeder and Issac Schabes discuss two rare protest sustains—one from GAO involving a successful challenge to the scope of corrective action, and the other from the Court of Federal Claims finding that the agency abused its discretion in not allowing the protester to fix a minor proposal error through clarifications.

Crowell & Moring’s “All Things Protest” podcast keeps you up to date on major trends in bid protest litigation, key developments in high-profile cases, and best practices in state and federal procurement. In this episode, Crowell attorneys Christian Curran and Zachary Schroeder discuss a recent GAO case (K&K Industries, Inc., B-420422; B-420422.2, March 7, 2022) that highlights timeliness traps with enhanced debriefings.

Crowell & Moring’s “All Things Protest” podcast keeps you up to date on major trends in bid protest litigation, key developments in high-profile cases, and best practices in state and federal procurement. In this episode, hosts Christian Curran, Olivia Lynch, and Rob Sneckenberg, along with special guests Anuj Vohra and Zach Schroeder, discuss some of the most interesting protest decisions from 2019 and their implications for contractors.