You just won a contract. Now the CO will notify you that an award protest has been filed by an interested party – usually with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) or the Court of Federal Claims (COFC). So why do you care? Well, because you can be part of the proceeding if your award is being challenged. At either the GAO or COFC, awardees have the option to “intervene” in the protest and work with the government in defending the award.
The information you, as the awardee, will provide is done through your legal counsel. Legal counsel can give the agency information on your proposal and assist in defending against the protester’s arguments. For GAO protests, the intervenor’s counsel can work with the agency to control how much information on its proposal and evaluation is released. Intervenor’s counsel can identify case law or raise new arguments.
In Excelsior Ambulance Service, Inc., No. 15-189C (Fed. Cl. March 23, 2016), the protester challenged the award of a contract by the Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”). The contracting officer notified the awardee of the protest. The awardee chose not to intervene, because it believed the protest centered on pricing. The COFC sustained the protest, finding that the awardee failed to submit the required business license with its proposal and that the VA allowed the awardee to revise its proposal during a corrective action.
The government stated it would not appeal the court’s decision, so the awardee moved to intervene to pursue an appeal. Because the awardee had not tried to intervene until 11 months after the protest was filed, the court denied the motion. The awardee lost the contract.
So the bottom line is that you need to keep on top of any protests filed against awards you were given and understand the nature of the protest. You do not want to ultimately lose the contract because you thought it wasn’t something you needed to be involved in.