News You Can Use
June 29th, 2019: YUGE (i.e., BIG-TIME) FAR PART 15 RULE CHANGE!
Effective July 12, 2019: The Final Rule was released removing the “reasonable expectation” test from the adequate price competition definition for the DoD, NASA and Coast Guard competitive acquisitions. Now at least 2 responsive offers must be received and the contractor must determine best value as indicated below in the excerpt from the updated regulation. HOWEVER, while this rule represents a change to the FAR, a similar rule has existed in the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement at 215.371-3 for a number of years.
(1) Adequate price competition. (i) A price is based on adequate price competition when—
(A) Two or more responsible offerors, competing independently, submit priced offers that satisfy the Government’s expressed requirement;
(B) Award will be made to the offeror whose proposal represents the best value (see 2.101) where price is a substantial factor in source selection; AND
(C) There is no finding that the price of the otherwise successful offeror is unreasonable. Any finding that the price is unreasonable must be supported by a statement of the facts and approved at a level above the contracting officer.
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August 21, 2018: Do you really know what is in the 2019 NDAA passed by Congress and signed into law? Here is an excellent summary of huge changes in the cyber security area, LPTA, commerciality, and more: https://www.governmentcontractslegalforum.com/2018/08/articles/legal-developments/fy-2019-ndaa/
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June 3, 2018: Major development in the use of new "Other Transaction Authority", OTAs. — GAO overturns DoD agreement for $1B in cloud computing services
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BIG NEWS UPDATE (7/14/18): The Federal Government is consolidating many functions into a new https://beta.sam.gov/ web site, including FedBizOpps (now, "Contract Opportunities"). The search feature is much more like a search engine now, or Google/Bing-esque. Same goes for entity-searches for debarment/exclusion information. Enjoy.
