Bid protest
Also called: protest, GAO protest, agency-level protest, Court of Federal Claims protest, GAO
A bid protest is a formal objection to a solicitation, an exclusion, or an award, filed with the agency, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) or the Court of Federal Claims, arguing that the agency broke procurement law or its own stated rules.
Agency-level protests follow FAR 33.103; GAO protests follow FAR 33.104 and GAO's bid protest regulations in 4 CFR Part 21. GAO deadlines are strict: a protest of solicitation terms is due before the proposal deadline, and a protest of an award is due within ten days of when you knew or should have known the basis, or within ten days after a required debrief. A timely post-award GAO protest filed within the window in FAR 33.104(c) triggers an automatic stay of performance. State and local protests follow the state procurement code and often have much shorter windows.
What to check: the deadline before anything else, whether your ground is one GAO sustains (evaluation inconsistent with Section M, unequal treatment, unstated criteria) rather than disagreement with a judgment call, and the cost of counsel against the value of the contract.
What it is not: an appeal on the merits. Protest bodies review whether the agency followed the rules, not whether your proposal was better.
See also: Debrief, Section M, Award notice, Bid tabulation, Corrective action
Questions that use this term
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