A protest in federal contracting is “a written objection by an interested party regarding the solicitation, award, or cancellation of a government contract”.
We have a bunch of episodes on Protests – episode 023, 432 and others. We even have a protest playlist.
It’s important to note that protests are fairly unique to GovCon. Sure, we can argue about whether we would have, could have, or should have gotten a customer to award a contract to in the private sector….but we’re not likely to have formal rules about how to do so. Few places lay out the rules of how to lodge a complaint over losing like the FAR does…or like the US Code does to be more specific.
In this episode, Maria Panichelli joins Kevin to dig deeper into the nuances of protests…this time we outline the Protest Intervention. This is a less understood, and less frequently used step in the protest process. In short, a protest intervener is the winning offer who is looking to team up with the government to help defend the award to them.
Rather than sit back and hope they keep the contract, an intervener is “intervening” in the protest process so that they can, if possible, help the government show they made the right decision by awarding to their company.
Check out this episode if you’ve ever wondered what a Protest Intervention is, why it matter, or how you could use this process.