Procuring agencies must make an affirmative determination of contractor responsibility before awarding federal contracts. While a responsibility determination is necessary for all successful offerors, a non-responsibility determination that precludes a small business from receiving an award must be referred to
The government often adds products and services to its existing contracts by executing contract modifications and amending the relevant terms. Under the General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) program, a vendor’s schedule contract may be modified to add
The government may provide performance workload estimates during the solicitation phase to assist offerors in preparing their bids or proposals. If due care is not exercised in preparing these estimates and the contractor relies on them, the government may be
The bid protest regulations of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) contain timeliness requirements that demand strict adherence by protesters. In cases where a protester first files an agency-level protest, any subsequent protest at the GAO must be filed within 10
Solicitations for federal contracts performed in foreign countries may include definitive responsibility criteria mandating compliance with the laws and requirements of the host nation. Such criteria are considered objective standards, included in the solicitation to evaluate the offerors’ ability to
Contractors may recover their increased costs of performance attributable to government-supplied defective specifications, provided they are design specifications rather than performance specifications. However, most government-furnished specifications contain both design and performance requirements. To recover under the Spearin doctrine, a contractor must prove
The Competition in Contracting Act (CICA) requires full and open competition in federal procurement unless one of the limited exceptions enumerated in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) part 6 applies. Meanwhile, the General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Supply Schedule (FSS)
The rule of two requires that all contracts above the micro-purchase threshold be set-aside for small businesses, provided there is a reasonable expectation that two or more responsible small business concerns would submit offers at fair market prices and those
The government may provide design specifications to the contractor for the performance of a government contract, directing work and implying a warranty that the supplied specifications are free of defects. Under the Spearin doctrine, if the government’s design specifications are then found
The Small Business Administration (SBA) Mentor-Protégé Program (MPP) allows small businesses to pair with large contractors to form joint venture (JV) entities that can pursue any small business set-aside contract for which the protégé firm individually qualifies as small. The