Compliance Stuff

Many joint venture (JV) contractors have spent weeks of painstaking effort developing proposals only to learn later after winning a significant contract award that they are ineligible because of the failure to follow the mandatory regulations for JV agreements under the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) All-Small Mentor-Protégé Program (ASMPP). I f a JV agreement fails to include every mandatory provision required by SBA’s regulations, that JV contractor can be determined ineligible for award. Therefore, at the beginning of the proposal process, contractors must review closely SBA’s regulations associated with the ASMPP to make sure that they have a compliant JV agreement.  A failure to do so can result in the loss of millions of dollars in contracts.  In this alert, we provide steps to make sure your JV agreement is compliant.   1. Understand which SBA regulations apply to that particular JV and to the particular set-aside contract that the JV is pursuing.   ...

Football, pumpkin spice, and Halloween are not the only things to expect this upcoming fall season. With the federal government’s fiscal year ending on September 30, the next few months are sure to be a busy time for federal procurement and, inevitably, bid protests. Protests related to federal government procurements have strict and short deadlines that carry harsh consequences if they are not met. The following discussion examines the protest deadlines for the various venues in which government contractors often find themselves . In this alert, we summarize the deadlines for small business procurement programs associated with the Small Business Administration (SBA) and for merit-based protests related to the issuance of a government solicitation or the award of a contract.   For procurements that are set aside under SBA’s programs, there are three key determinations that are often the subject of protests: size of the awardee, status of the awardee, and the North American Industr...