I’ve often been asked this question over the course of my career and my answer has always been “No.” I could never find anywhere that said an offeror had to be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) under the National Industrial Classification System (NAICS) used in the solicitation for them to win the award. Now it seems that the General Accounting Office (GAO) agrees with me.
In a recent decision, GAO found that an awardee’s failure to list the assigned NAICS code under its SAM profile did not make its proposal technically unacceptable. Veterans Electric, LLC, B-413198 (Aug. 26, 2016) involved a Veterans Affairs (VA) solicitation seeking electrical upgrades. The solicitation was set-aside for service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses. The VA issued the solicitation under NAICS code 238210 (Electrical Contractors and Other Wiring Installation Contractors), which carries a size standard of $15M.
The government received two proposals – one from Veterans Electric and one from Architectural Consulting Group (ACG). After the evaluation, the government awarded to ACG.
Veterans Electric protested the award stating that ACG could not be technically acceptable since they were not registered in SAM under 238210 as used in the solicitation and that ACG failed to certify that it met the relevant size standard.
On the first allegation, the GAO determined that a technical evaluation is within the agency’s discretion and GAO found no basis to question ACG’s level of technical experience simply because it did not identify the primary NAICS code in its proposal or its SAM profile. GAO wrote:
So long as a company meets the applicable size standard, we are aware of no statutory or regulatory requirement that it have the particular NAICS code identified in the solicitation as its primary code.
On the second allegation, GAO acknowledged that ACG’s proposal and SAM profile did not list NAICS code 238210. However, GAO said that the contracting officer’s (CO) determination showed that ACG listed several other NAICS codes at or below the relevant the $15 million size standard which was enough to show that ACG met the size standard requirements.
Overall, GAO denied Veterans Electric’s protest.
So the bottom line is that a business does not have to be registered under the NAICS code used on the solicitation to receive the award. However, there must be other evidence in their SAM profile or other data provided to the CO to show that the meet the size standard of the stated NAICS code.
Hey, that means I was right all along!