How to Successfully Navigate Bid, Size, and Status Protests

So, good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to GovSpan's educational series. My name is Archisha Meehan, and I am the head of public sector federal at GovSpan. And as many of you might know, GovSpan is a leading trusted source of data analytics and insights for organizations buying and selling into the public sector. Today's webinar is how to successfully navigate bid size and status protests with Maria Panicelli, a partner at MacArthur and English LLP's government contract contracts group and a good friend. So I am super excited to have Maria, kick off our educational series. I I love your webinars, Maria. So always always happy to have you with us, and thank you so much. So just a little background about Maria. Maria's clients include Prime and Subs working with a variety of agencies across a wide breadth of industries all over the nation and abroad. She helps these clients navigate every stage of the procurement process. Maria is one of those few attorneys who truly understands the unique challenges involved in government contracting and the small business procurement process. She's very proficient in interpreting and applying the FAR, the DFARS, BAR, GSAR, etcetera, as well as the small business regulations and furtherance of her client goals. Maria's practice includes bid protests, asserting and intervening, contract interpretation and performance counseling, the preparation and negotiation of REAs and CDA claims, as well as related litigation before the boards of contract appeals, the court of federal claims and the federal circuit, statutory and regulatory compliance counseling, federal subcontracting, contract terminations, and suspension in departments. Having acquired substantial experience with the government's small business programs, Maria also provides effective assistance to eight a, HUBZone, VOSB, SDVOSB, and VO WOSB and EDWOSB clients seeking to obtain or maintain small business eligibility. Her clients enjoy practical and shrewd advice AI as well as zealous advocacy in the bid protest litigation, claims prosecution, and the false claims act defense. Maria is also very active in a number of industry related professional associations, is a frequent lecturer, thought leader, and author on government contracting and small business procurement topics. Today's topic actually is one of my favorites. I believe that the GAO protest documents provide a lot of valuable information to a lot of the companies that we work with and are actually a really, really helpful resource. What I have found and I know, Maria, I'm taking a couple of seconds. But what I've really found is that the protest decisions many times give us a lot of good insight into how that agency is thinking. Many AI, we see pricing across decisions. And, in AI, we actually, pull in the GAO protest documents, and it's available to our clients. So super excited, Maria, to have you, to welcome you. Thank you for being here. And, I guess, we can go to the next slide. I think I've been talking away. Yes. Introductions are done. We're gonna get into the presentation. A couple of housekeeping AI. We will be sending an email with a link to the actual presentation and the recording to everyone. And, for question answers, please yeah. It is being recorded. And for question answers, please go ahead and either use the chat function or there's a q and a box. You could use either one of those, and I will go ahead and ask the questions at the end. Right, Maria? That makes the most sense? Alright. Okay. Cool. So with that, Maria, thank you for being here, and, I will let you take it over. Great. Well, thank you for that lovely introduction, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. As you heard today, we're gonna be talking about how to successfully navigate bid, size, and status protests. You can throw your questions in the the q and a or in the chat, To the extent that I can kind of address them offhand while we're going, I will do that. But, otherwise, I'll try to leave some room at the end. And, of course, if we have questions, there's a lot of you guys on today, and this is always a a a complicated topic that results in in questions. So if you've got questions that we don't get to today or that you don't think of until after we're done today, or if you just don't like asking questions in a public forum, that's okay too. You can feel free to reach out to me directly afterwards. You've got my email. You've got my phone number. You've also got my social media information, and you'll see this slide again at the end of the presentation. And, again, as you heard, you'll be getting a copy of the recording and the slides. So alright. I wanna start with some kind of basic concepts, and the reason for that is that when you're talking about protests, there are a lot of contractors that think they know a ton about protests. And they might know a ton about some types of protests because they've gone through one before. You know, they were protested, and they've they've been on the intervening side. But protests are very fact specific. And AI of the the path that you take and the issues that you deal with and the deadlines that are applicable and who's the, you know, court or agency or adjudicatory body that's kind of ruling over them differs. So I want to start with the building blocks and move up from there. The goal being not that you're gonna remember everything you learned today. This is a lot of information. Protests is a very complicated topic. But that you're going to kind of remember and recognize enough to be able to go back to these slides, come back to the recording, and kinda know the broad brushstrokes and know when you need to reach out or, you know, what the appropriate AI is for when you should reach out for help when you need to, you know, assess whether or not you have a protest or get help when you have been protested. So we're gonna talk about bid protests, and then we're gonna talk about size and status protests. And we're gonna talk about each, both from the protesters' point of view and also from the point of view of what happens if you are the party that gets protested. Again, we've got a lot to cover today. An hour is a a short time to get through it. So I am gonna go, you know, as as as fast as we can without sacrificing clarity. But if you've got more questions, like I said, happy to to have a more leisurely conversation, with those of you who have protest issues or any other legal issues, offline afterwards. So the the first thing I wanna start with is to make sure you understand the lingo, because a lot of AI, someone will just say, you know, I've got a protest or I've been protested or I'm in the middle of a protest. And there really is a clear delineation between bid protests on one hand and size and status protests on the other. Bid protests are challenges that are raised by a competitor, either to the the by a contractor, either to the award that has been made, or to the elimination of, you know, a contractor from the competitive range or to the terms of the solicitation itself. So, really, it's based on an impropriety in the source selection process, I e something that the agency, the procuring agency or agencies have done wrong, whether they, you know, failed to comply with the evaluation scheme laid out in the solicitation, whether the way that they wrote the solicitation is in violation of applicable law, things like that. The idea is when you are doing a bid protest, you are challenging agency action or inaction. Size and status protests are different. They're not about what the agency did wrong or, you know, did the agency AI with applicable law? Did they follow the solicitation, etcetera? It's just, hey. Are the awardees or is one awardee even eligible for this contract? And those come up in the context of set aside awards. When the government says, hey. We're we're not gonna let just anyone compete for this award. It's going to be set aside and only open to competition amongst whether it's small businesses or HUBZone businesses or eight a businesses or or whatever the case may be. You know, there are set aside programs for small federal businesses, and then there are set aside programs for specific types of small federal businesses, eight a, HUBZone, SDVOSB, VOSB, WOSB or WOSB, and EDWOSB. The idea being that, you know, there are different types of small businesses that need different types of eligibility requirements as we're gonna talk about when we get to the size and status protest section. And, obviously, they're all small businesses. So if you're challenging how large they are and saying that they're not really a small business, that's a size protest. If you're challenging one of the other eligibility criteria, whether ownership, control, or or something else, that's gonna be a status protest. And we're gonna talk about all of those in more detail. But it's very important to understand kind of from a from a threshold point whether you are talking about a bid protest or a size or status protest. This is because they are against or challenging different parties. The forums that you go to to adjudicate these things are different. The types of issues, the deadlines, all of those things are different. And it's very important to understand AI of what world you're operating in, whether you're on the protester side or whether you've been protested because that's gonna dictate where you go from there, what arguments you can make, how quickly you have to make those arguments, what your options are, what your rights are, etcetera. So we're gonna talk about bid protests first. Like I said, bid protests are really just a challenge to some sort of some sort, excuse me, of government action or inaction, whether it's, you know, an allegation that the terms of the solicitation, whether it's a request for proposals, an invitation for bids, or a request for quotation, whatever the case may be, that there's something wrong with those terms. It could be that the evaluation of offers or bidders or whatever the case may be, vendors, and the resulting source selection decision was wrong. Or it could be that there's a conflict of interest, an OCI issue, or a violation of the procurement integrity act. Really, it's all about did the government do what they were supposed to do? Did they follow applicable law? Did they act consistently with the solicitation in making an award, or in, you know, putting the award out there if you're talking about a pre award protest? In terms of the laws that govern bid protests, like everything with government contracting, the starting place is the FAR, the Federal Acquisition Regulation, that's gonna govern to a large degree substance because to the extent that you're saying, hey. The government didn't apply with applicable law. A lot of the, quote, unquote, applicable law that the government is supposed to be complying with when they are going through a procurement process is outlined in the FAR. The FAR sections one through fifty one, are kind of instructions to, in most cases, the contracting officer, sometimes to other people at the government or sometimes to the contractor themselves. But a lot of times, you know, FAR one through fifty one is talking about, you know, what clauses the contracting officer has to put in a contract when and how they need to administer certain parts of the contract. And then FAR part fifty two is the actual clauses themselves. FAR part thirty three specifically addresses the procedures dealing with bid protests. So you've got both substance and procedure in the FAR. Depending on what agency you are dealing with, you might have supplemental acquisition regulations AI the DFAR, if you're dealing with a DOD, Department of Defense agency, or the VAR, if you're dealing with the VA. There are also just a a host of other government contracting related statutes or regulations. You know, some of the most common are the the Competition and Contracting Act, CECA, the jurisdictional statute of the Tucker Act, things like that. The small business regulations and, previously, the VA regulations, although those are not, you know, necessarily, as prevalent now that there's been a consolidation of the SDVOSB program. But the small business regulations are very important for size and status protests, but can also become important depending on what the arguments that are kind of arising out of the bid protest are. And, of course, then you've got the forum rules. We're gonna talk in just a little bit about where you as a protester can bring a bid protest. But, you know, where you decide to bring it, each forum is going to have their own rules, and you need to make sure that you are compliant with those. Now as to the the question at the bottom of the page, the solicitation itself, whether it's a, you know, a request for proposal, request for quotation, invitation for bid, you know, etcetera, that's obviously not law. Right? It's a solicitation. It's something that the government put together, hopefully, if they did their job consistent with law. But the issue is that AI the law, it's going to be something that you hold up as a comparison point. What did the agency do is on one hand. What did the law AI, and what did the solicitation require? That's on the other hand. So you're gonna be comparing what the agency did both to the applicable law and to what they said they were gonna do in the solicitation. It's kind of a a foil or a focal point for figuring out what arguments you might have. Some critical questions and considerations in bid protest land. Who are you dealing with? You know, is it one agency? Is it multiple agencies? That's obviously an easy question. If you've got, you know, one stand alone contract for one agency, it becomes more complicated if you've got a multiple award vehicle, especially like a GWAC or a GSA schedule where other agencies are are putting in orders or any of the the GSA kind of monolith contracts out there AI Polaris or Oasis or Stars or or, you know, any of those kind of, those contract creatures for lack of a better term. What type of contract is an issue AI of related to what I just said? Is it a an IDIQ? Is it a GWAC? Is it a task order under one of those? Is it a set aside contract? Is it a, you know, a BPA under a GSA schedule contract? There are various different ways that the government can procure things and kind of layer contracts, and you need to understand what type of contract is at issue. What method of procurement is being used? Similarly, the government has a lot of different ways they can choose to, procure things. They can use the federal supply schedules under far part eight, you know, the the GSA. They can use simplified acquisition. They can use commercial item acquisition. They can use sealed bidding, where price is the most important factor as long as you're responsive and responsible. The lowest bidder gets the the award. Or you can use contracting by negotiation under FAR part fifteen where it's gonna be a best value trade off decision between price and and non price factors. Each of these is under a different section of the FAR. Different, obviously, clauses, therefore, AI. And the the arguments that you're going to be able to make as a protester are different because the way in which offers or vendors or bidders are going to be compared and selected for award are going to be different based on those various sections of the FAR. And, finally, again, where are you filing that goes to the forum and, you know, which which for you choose to to file in because those rules are going to be different. The the main thing you need to keep in mind for bid protests, and this is where I see a lot of contractors make a mistake or make mistakes, I guess, I should say. There is not one trajectory or one AI, when you are talking about bid protests. There are different jumping off points. These are going to depend on, you know, how you answered some of those critical questions we just went over and what type of protest you are filing. There are different types of protest. There are protests based on errors in the solicitation. There are protests that are based on being excluded from the competitive range, and there are post award protests. So we're gonna go over this in a little bit more detail as we move forward, but just to kinda give you a little bit of a preview and give you a the framework to build upon as we move forward. When you are talking about errors in the solicitation, when the solicitation drops, you need to take a careful look and figure out if there are issues there because that's gonna set you on the road to do a pre award protest based on errors in the solicitation. Competitive range is something that happens in some FAR part fifteen procurements where the government selects kind of the the cream of the crop, tells everyone else, thanks for playing. Have a nice day. But, you know, unfortunately, you're out of the running for this one. They conduct what are called discussions with the remaining cream of the crop people, allow them to revise their bids or proposals as the case may be, since it's FAR part fifteen, their proposals. And then the government makes a decision based on those, you know, revised proposals. If you get a notice that you've been excluded from the competitive range, that is time to start down the path to pre award protest based on exclusion from the competitive range. What most contractors think and what they're most familiar with is this post award scenario where, you know, now that you get the notice of unsuccessful offer and you know who got the award, now it's time to protest. But going back to these previous two slides, what you need to understand is that there are other jumping off points. If you've got different types of protest, it's very, very possible that you cannot wait until after award to start moving with your protest. So the biggest or one of the biggest mistakes I see contractors make is assume that all the action happens after the award goes down and that there's nothing that they can do about a protest or nothing that they should do about a protest before that, and that's simply not true. You know, AI, you just saw on the previous slides, if you've got, you know, an issue where there's an issue with the solicitation, you want to make sure you file that before the deadline to respond to the solicitation. If you get an exclusion from the competitive range, you're gonna have to act on that when you get that notice. And then if you've got, you know, an award decision, then you have got a post award protest. And we'll talk about each of those in more detail as we go forward. I just wanted to kinda lay the groundwork upfront about, you know, these different types of protests, the different types of issues, that you can see, and then we're gonna talk as we move forward about, you know, what each of those means, the deadline for them, etcetera. So in terms of, you know, the the various different types of issues that go along with every one of these types of of protests. When you were talking about that first kind of protest, the errors in the solicitation, what kinds of things are protestable? Ambiguous or contradictory terms. You know, you got something in one section of the the solicitation that's directly contradictory or subject to multiple interpretations as compared to something else in another section of the solicitation. Maybe the government included a clause that shouldn't be in there. You know, why do you have something about cost reimbursable contracts when this is supposed to be a firm fixed price? Why do you have a GSA, you know, or or VAR clause if this is a GSA contract or vice versa? Other things can be inaccuracies, other things that make no sense, or things that are violative of in or inconsistent with, you know, applicable law. This is covers a a wide, applicable law. This is covers a a wide host of different issues that can come up. But, again, the idea is if you see something in the solicitation that is inconsistent with what you know is applicable law or you have your attorney take a look at it, this is the time to protest. Unduly or overly restrictive terms or specifications, generally, the government, the US government, it's a big preference in our procurement system to have full and fair and open competition. Like, the more the merrier, the more people are competing, the better. So anytime the agency puts something, oops, in their solicitation that kinda limits the playing field, they need to be able to justify why they did that. Now saying we need a contractor that has, you know, at least three projects of similar magnitude, that's a reasonable ask that they could probably pretty easily justify. But saying, you know, we need a contractor that only wears red shoelaces on Tuesdays and is specifically located in this county in Alabama, obviously, that's a ridiculous example, but you see my point. They're gonna have a hard time justifying that restriction or, you know, that limitation. So you sometimes can get into arguments over whether or not something is unduly or overly restrictive without proper justification. Things like improper use of LPTA or improper past performance consideration issues, These are kind of examples or or things that are related to the the bullet point above where I say things that are violent above or inconsistent with applicable law. You know, there are regulations that govern when lowest price technically acceptable can be used. For a while, agencies were getting, you know, really, really happy with LPTA and using it a lot, and contractors didn't like that. And they fought back, and, ultimately, the the regulations were modified. But some contracting officers don't know that there have been limitations put on using LPTA. So if you see LPTA being used, that might be something that you wanna bring up at this juncture. Improper past performance consideration issues. I recently blogged about a a question that was related to this, you know, especially sorry, guys. Especially when you are talking about JVs or teams, there are sometimes questions about something being in a solicitation that's inconsistent with the small business regulations, you know, in terms of how they're going to consider past performance of of GV partners or, you know, how much credit people are gonna get for projects that they performed as part of a joint venture. Those are all things, again, that you wanna deal with upfront. Also, set aside, you know, rule of two kingdomware issues. And AI, if there's anything in there that's a de facto responsibility determination, if it's a small business set aside, These are all things that would be, you know, a good idea to protest upfront. The reason that I've got a couple stars on here is that these are things that you know, we're talking about protests today, but these are things that also come into play or or can come in handy, you know, that you've done these if you have a performance issue later. Obviously, when you're kind of at this BD pipeline, you know, trying to bring work in stage and you're evaluating the proposal or AI sorry, the solicitation, you're focused on what you need to do to put the best proposal or, you know, bid or or quote together. Keep in mind that you're gonna have to perform the contract performance stage, you know, they're missing the different site conditions clause on a, you know, on a, construction contract. They've forgotten to put the changes clause in. They've forgotten to put the disputes clause in. These are things that even though they're not affecting the actual, you know, development of a proposal, they're gonna affect you and limit what you can do later on. This is the time to bring that up. It can also help if you point out inaccuracies or, you know, clauses that shouldn't be in there or ambiguous terms in terms of defective specification claims later. So not strictly in the realm of what we're talking about today, but just best practices both with regards to protests and in regards to, you know, performance and and keeping an eye going forward. Now we get to competitive range and post award protests. Remember, competitive range, I said, you kinda have to start down that path when you get the notice that you've been excluded from the competitive range. Post award is the more familiar scenario that probably most of you have, you know, been more familiar with, where you get the notice of unsuccessful offer and then you proceed towards the the path of protest. They're usually gonna be AI of based on on similar arguments. But in all cases, it's going to depend on the the critical questions we talked about before. You know, what section of the FAR is this requirement being procured under? You know, did the agency follow the solicitation stated evaluation scheme? Was that consistent with law? Did the agency follow or comply with applicable law in general? What was the exclusion based on? You know, what was the what were the discussions? What is protestable, again, is going to depend if you're talking about something where price was the only factor, and, you know, versus where price and non price factors were meant to be, you know, dealt with, in a in a best value or trade off decision. But when you are talking about these various oops. Sorry, guys. Every time I try to see the q and a, it moves the slide forward. You know, common non AI evaluation factors, use of an unstated evaluation criteria or subfactor, error in applying the evaluation AI, or error in assigning the ratings, unequal or disparate treatment of offers, again, misapplication of law or unreasonable evaluation methods, as long as they weren't clear on the face of the solicitation such that you should have protested earlier. And then if it is a competitive range situation, meaningful, misleading, or uneven discussions. Price evaluation issues can include price reasonableness, price realism, escalation or adjustment, balance pricing, HUBZone preference. Again, this is not an exclusive list. You know, generally speaking, what happens is my clients call me and we work through why they think the award to a competitor is unreasonable, and then we tie it back to actual legal arguments. The key is and we're gonna talk about this more a little bit later. But the key is it can't just be they can't possibly be as good as me. You have to have some logical basis where, you know, based on the evaluation scheme or framework that was set forth in the solicitation, logically, they could not have performed as well as you such as to, you know, justify an award being made to them. It's really about trying to come up with as many, you know, reasonable arguments as you can and have them be as objective as opposed to subjective as you can. Where you're gonna get this information, is hopefully, and we'll talk about why I'm saying hopefully in just a second, through debriefing. Debriefings are a tool that you can use to gather information. The key, whether you are talking about a pre award or a post award debriefing, is that you have a right to get reasonable responses to relevant questions. So it's really about preparing for your debrief and making sure that you ask appropriate questions based on what you think went wrong. Now I get a lot of questions from clients about, you know, who should attend. Generally speaking, I find and I think this is anecdotal and, you know, maybe different attorneys have different views on this. But I find that if you can prepare with your attorney ahead of time, you're better off not having the attorney at the debrief itself. You should take copious notes. You might even be able to ask if you can record it. But if you have a lawyer there, the agency attorney will definitely be there. You will probably get less information. So, generally, the more information you want, the more, you know, the the more advisable it is not to have an attorney there. Of course, if you think it's gonna be contentious and if you think the government's going to, you know, push back and not give you what you're legally entitled to. I've sat through plenty of debriefings with clients when they wanted me to. It's really something you should talk about. But as long as you feel comfortable going forward, it can sometimes be better to to do that without an attorney as attorneys sometimes have a chilling effect on how much information you're gonna get. And debriefing is really a tool to get as much information as you have so you have as much ammunition as possible if you're gonna go along with the protest. In terms of written versus telephonic or, you know, versus Zoom versus in person, AI are barely ever any in person debriefings anymore. I don't think I've heard of one for years. If you are given the choice between written and telephonic or Zoom, generally speaking, it's better to have an opportunity to go back and forth, especially because of the the questions issue. You wanna make sure you can get answers to your questions. You can kinda drill down, ask follow-up questions, etcetera. You're not gonna have that if you just get a written debrief. Now we're gonna talk as we move forward about the fact that in DOD procurements, you do have a right to ask follow-up questions and that, generally, that tolls the time that you have to file your protest. So you do have more opportunity to ask questions in a DOD scenario. That's why one of the the questions upfront is, you know, who are you dealing with? It's important if it's a a civilian agency or a military agency. But that so it becomes a little less important in DOD procurements to try to get a telephonic or Zoom debrief as opposed to a written debrief. But especially if you're dealing with a civilian agency, if you can push for telephonic or Zoom, that's better. You always wanna be professional. You don't wanna, approach this as a combative, or adversarial process. Yes. This might be where you gather information to file a bid protest, which can be seen as adversarial, though not combative. You never wanna be seen as combative. But, you know, right now, you're just gathering information. You should and, again, because we're talking about protests, this is strictly speaking outside the the topic today. But pro tip, you should get a debrief even when you win. One, because I guarantee you nobody ever does anything perfectly. You're gonna learn what you can do better for next time. You're also gonna learn how this agency thinks and how they evaluate things, which is gonna help you do better proposals in the future. And AI, previewing a little bit what we're gonna talk about as we move forward. If you get the award but are protested, you're gonna have kind of a running start in terms of how much information you know about, you know, potential weaknesses that could lead to you being divested of your award. So all of this is good stuff and a reason to, you know, get a debriefing even if you win. So remember AI said upfront that, hopefully, where you're gonna get all this information is the debrief. I say hopefully because you are not always entitled to a debrief, and we are gonna talk about that a little bit more as we move forward. But you are only entitled to a debrief in certain scenarios. In other scenarios, you may be entitled to something called a brief explanation. And, again, we'll circle back to this because it has an impact on deadlines. But the key is to make sure you know if you're in a required debrief scenario. Make sure you know that even if the government is calling something a debrief, it might not be it might be a brief explanation. And even if they're giving you a debrief, it might not be required. So all of those things are important, and it's one of the reasons that you should have talked to a legal professional upfront when you start getting into protest land to figure out you kind of are aware of all the moving pieces and all the right definitions even if the government is calling things by the wrong terms because they do that fairly often. In terms of what information you're looking for and what types of arguments you're trying to come up with, not all protests are created equal. You know, you wanna be looking for the most objective types of arguments you can, and you wanna be looking for really clear pitfalls. So jurisdiction, if you've got remember AI said upfront, one of the key questions you need to ask yourself is what kind of contract you've got. One of the reasons that that's important is that if you're talking about a task order contract, you cannot go to the court of federal claims or the the agency. You have to go to the GAO. So you're gonna see in such just a couple slides the options you have. Your options are limited when you're talking about a task order protest. And even further, they are limited in that you have to surpass excuse me, surpass a certain dollar threshold in order to be able to protest a task order. It has to be over ten million if you're dealing with civilian agency and over twenty five million if you're dealing with a military agency. Otherwise, the protest will be dismissed right off the bat. They won't even look at the merits or the arguments you've actually made. It just doesn't meet the jurisdictional threshold. Another thing is that you have to have standing. You have to be an interested party and show competitive prejudice. If you can't do that, you're gonna get, again, dismissed before they even look at the merits of your protest. If you actually get into the merits, as I've said before, you're you're really looking at the in many objective arguments as you can make as possible in terms of the government not complying with applicable law or not following the stated evaluation criteria. They're not going to you know, whether it's the GAO or the Court of Federal Claims, they're not going to substitute judgment, you know, the agency's judgment. You have to prove that the agency was actually unreasonable or arbitrary. It's not enough that you disagree or even that reasonable minds can differ. One of the key things, and it's important to to talk to an attorney, I think, and, obviously, this is my personal view. But I think it's important to talk to an attorney who, a, has experience in bid protest in particular, but also, b, takes the view that you should only pursue protests if you, the contractor, are likely to ultimately get something out of it. So that means, a, figuring out what your chances are that you will actually win the protest, and, b, figuring out what a win looks like. Because if you win a protest, you don't automatically get the award. The GAO or the court of federal claims or the agency doesn't come back and go, oh, okay. Now we just give an award to you. Oftentimes, they go back to the drawing board and they reconsider all of the proposals or, you know, quotes or or bids that they got. So it might not, in the end, mean that you walk away with an award. That's an honest and frank and transparent, sensitive topic conversation that you need to have with your attorney. And in terms of trying to figure out, you know, how likely you are to, you know, win a protest, you're gonna wanna go through all those arguments we talked about before. We're gonna wanna see, you know, what objective arguments you have versus, you know, what subjective arguments are unlikely to succeed. Wanna make sure you don't have any jurisdiction issues or any standing issues. And you wanna talk to your attorney about, you know, the the cost benefit analysis. How much is this gonna cost me? Can we take it in stages? How much is it gonna cost me to file the protest letter? You know, the the the original protest brief itself. Alright. After that, once we get the documents, how much will it cost to go to the next stage? Is it worth it to take it, you know, to see where we get? Let's file the protest and see what happens in the the additional documents and then see if it's worth continuing from there or dropping it. And, again, if you've got an attorney that's willing to talk to you at every stage and kind of reassess and have an open and frank conversation with you, that's gonna work a lot better than just kind of plowing ahead with a protest where you don't have a chance of winning. Alright. So in terms of preparing to file and filing, you're gonna choose your forum. Where are protests filed and heard? I've kind of alluded to this as we go forward. I'm sorry, as as we were were going through before. You've got three options. You can go to the agency itself, contracting officer, agency level protest. You can go to the GAO, or you can go to the court of federal claims, AKA, COFC, or CUFC. When you are deciding, generally speaking, most contractors and most attorneys, the the default is going to be to go to the GAO, but this too is a discussion you should have with your attorney. The reason that most people like to go to the GAO, is because they kind of are their bread and butter excuse me. Bread and butter is protests. They do protests all the time. Compare that to the court of federal claims where some of what they do is government contracts and some of that is protest. They've got a lot of other stuff that the judges do. They're not necessarily as focused on, you know, the developments that the the the protest law has gone through at the GAO. And agency level, again, just anecdotally, AI biggest issue is that they're mostly unwilling or or, you know, not likely, I guess I should say, to reevaluate a decision that they just made. You sometimes can get some traction on agency protests if it's an administrative or clerical error, like transposition of numbers or pages sticking together or something like that. But, otherwise, I generally find that they're not successful. You do, however, if you go to the agency, then have an opportunity to go to the GAO. If you go to the GAO, you do have an opportunity to go to the court of federal claims. None of those are technically, quote, unquote, appeals. They kind of are are de novo or kind of start from the beginning, new procedures or or new processes. The only thing that you kind of sacrifice if you go to the agency before the GAO is you might give up the ability to get an automatic stay, which is another reason that a lot of people like to go to the GAO, and the GAO is kind of the the default forum choice. An automatic stay is basically a big old red pause button on the procurement while the parties litigate what's going to happen on the the protest itself. So if you file within a certain amount of time, we're gonna talk about what that means in just a little bit. At the GAO, you get a stay. You don't automatically get that at the court of federal claims. You have to petition for it. And if you go to the agency first before going to GAO, you might not get it, which is a lot of times why people just start at the GAO level. And then if it doesn't work, sometimes proceed to the court of federal claims, and sometimes don't. Sometimes they just take the decision. Oftentimes, they just take the decision that the GAO makes. What a protester files is gonna differ depending on, you know, which one of these forum they pick, at the agency level or the GAO lever level excuse me, level, basically, just a a letter brief. You wanna be as specific as possible, lay out as many arguments as possible, be as thorough as possible, cite as many examples or, you know, whatever information you got in the debrief. If you got a debrief as possible, court of federal claims, it's it's more akin to a a formal court case. You're gonna file a complaint. Often, that's gonna require affidavits or or verification. If you're also seeking a stay, it's not automatic. You have to petition for it here through injunctive relief, which is gonna mean a motion for preliminary injunction, motion for temporary restraining order, usually a memorandum of law in support of those things. So it's gonna differ depending on on where you are going. When to file is one of the most complicated questions in government contracting. So when you are talking about, you know, the the the deadlines, again, we're gonna go back to that concept I I put up front about the type of protest you are filing. We talked a little bit about this before in terms of the different deadlines for pre award, you know, based on the solicitation, competitive range exclusion versus post award. Again, do not make the mistake that so many contractors make, which is thinking that all the action happens after the award. There's at least two scenarios, you know, pre award protest based on errors in the solicitation and competitive range exclusion where you need to kinda light a fire under yourself and and get moving before you get to the award stage. So pre award protest based on errors in the solicitation, as I mentioned before, the filing deadline is before the the deadline to submit for, you know, your proposal or your bid or your quotation in response to the solicitation. That might mean that you need to proceed on parallel tracks doing both a, you know, putting your proposal together and getting it in and doing a protest because you wanna make sure that you've got your foot in the door in case the the protest doesn't, you know, doesn't succeed. You do not wanna roll the dice or hedge. Competitive range, you've got to act when you get that notice from exclusion from the competitive range because competitive range only happens with FAR part fifteen. FAR part fifteen, as you're gonna see in just a little bit, is a required debriefing scenario. So what does it mean to act? You have to request a debriefing, and you have to request it in writing within three days of getting that notice from the competitive range. Then depending on, you know, when the government schedules the debrief and what you get in that debrief, then you would proceed from there to a potential protest. Post award protests, again, probably the one that you guys are most familiar with, but, unfortunately, still not an easy question because there is a rule and then there is an exception to the rule, and then there are a couple different wrinkles. So the rule and we're going with GAO rules here. Court of federal claims is a little bit different. Agency is a little bit different. But because we have limited time and because the the default is to go to the GAO, I'm sticking with GAO as the the rule that we walk through here. If you have questions about the other two, I'm happy to to talk to you about it offline. But there's a rule. The rule is that the protest is due ten days from the day you know or should have known the basis of your protest. The exception to that rule, which many contractors think is the rule, but they are wrong, is that it's ten days from your debriefing. That exception only applies if it's a required debriefing scenario and if the debriefing was then timely requested. So required debriefing, you get a debriefing under FAR part fifteen, sometimes under FAR part sixteen, and sometimes if it's a commercial AI, par FAR part fifteen amalgamation, which can get complicated, and they're following FAR part fifteen procedures. But other times, you are not entitled to. It is not a required debriefing situation, which means, like I said before, even if the government gives you a debriefing, it wasn't AI debriefing. Even if they call something a debriefing, it might be actually a quote, unquote brief explanation, which is different. In which case, you're not the exception to the rule. You are the general rule, and the general rule is ten days from the day you know or should have known the basis of your protest. The government is always going to argue that that is ten days from the notice of award. You can sometimes get around that, but that's generally if you're trying to be safe when you need to, you know, in an abundance of caution, try to file. So, again, that's the rule and the exception to the rule. The exception being only if it's a required debriefing and it was timely requested. And, again, like the competitive range scenario, timely requested means three days in writing after you get the notice of unsuccessful offer. The wrinkle that I mentioned, and I alluded to this earlier as well, is that if you are in a DOD scenario, you are entitled to enhanced debriefing, which means that you can ask questions after your debriefing, and it is not until you get the answers back that your deadline starts ticking. So in other words, you know, let's say, you get a notice of unsuccessful offer on Monday. You know, you then ask for a debrief on Tuesday. You get a debrief on Friday. You ask additional questions Tuesday. They don't answer them until Friday. It's that second Friday when your ten days starts ticking. Compare that to you got the award notice on Monday. Well, that's it because it's not a required debriefing scenario, so you've got ten days from that original Monday. You can see how the AI start to kind of veer away from each other depending on all of the different facts specific to your procurement, whether it's a required debriefing, whether it's DOD, whether you ask questions, etcetera. The further wrinkle on here is that if you want that stay that I was talking about before, it's not ten days. It's five days from the debriefing or ten days from the day of the notice of award. So you've got different deadlines if you're trying to be timely as compared to if you're trying to get the stay. When I mentioned before that you have have to ask for your debrief in the competitive range scenario within three days, the government might choose to give it to you later. That's okay. You still got your foot in the door when you needed to, and then you're still AI of subject to to the, you know, the the tolling from the the time you get the debrief. But you can see this is a very complicated area. It's very easy to make mistakes. And if you blow your deadline, that's it. You don't get another shot. So, you know, it's very important to talk to an attorney as soon as possible when you think you've got a protest to make sure you understand what your deadlines are. That's obviously the first thing we try to get a handle on, and then we work to try to figure out what arguments there are if we've got an opportunity to get a debriefing, what questions we should ask, etcetera. But it's always, you know, a mad rush in the first twenty minutes after we get a potential protest in the door to figure out, okay. What's the filing deadline? And then everything AI of stems from there. So a quick recap on protest deadlines. You know, if you're talking about an error based on the solicitation, submit before the deadline to respond to the solicitation even if that means you're proceeding on parallel tracks. Otherwise, you're looking at ten days from if it's a required timely debriefing situation, ten days from the debriefing. If you've got, excuse me, enhanced debriefing where you get to ask questions, that's gonna be ten days from the days you get answers to those questions. Everything else, in other words, not a required or timely debriefing scenario, ten days from the day you knew or should have known the basis of your protest, which often is going to be the award date or the notice of unsuccessful offer date. At least that's gonna be what the government tries to say when they try to dismiss your protest. You might, in limited circumstances, be able to get around that, but it's a general pretty good rule to try to, you know, count your days from the day that you got the award notice. And we already discussed that the the deadlines are a little bit different and shorter if you're going after the automatic stay. Once you file a protest, there could be requests for dismissal. Then what happens next is the agency report. Then you have the opportunity to supplement your protest with new information that was in the agency report and also do what's called comments to the agency report. It's kind of the equivalent of a motion for summary judgment. There might be additional briefing after that, but then you're gonna get to the decision. And the decision's gonna be ninety days from the day the original protest was filed. These move quickly. Now, ideally, as a protester, what you want is for this process to be cut short, for it not to go all the way to the part where the court of federal claims or the GAO tells the agency that they messed up. But the agency kind of takes a good look at itself in the mirror and admits, yeah, we might have messed up. And they voluntarily take corrective action, at which point they go back and they, you know, go back to the drawing board and they fix whatever errors you were alleging. But if that doesn't happen, then you go through this this whole process and you ultimately get to the decision. Typical protest remedies, again, it's not gonna be that you just get the award. The award that was given to the other party might be terminated or or definitely will be stayed while they figure out what they're gonna do. They will reevaluate proposals, but at what stage and what scope will depend on what was alleged in the protest and what the actual issues were. There will then potentially be a reopening of discussions if there were discussions, solicitation of revised proposals if appropriate, modification of the solicitation in rare cases. If you are the winner, if you protested and you were successful and it goes all the way through litigation, you can get partial recovery of your costs. But, again, the key here is to understand that the court of federal claims and the GAO aren't gonna order the agency to give you an award. It's gonna be a back to the drawing board scenario. Alright. So intervention, we're gonna cover real quick so that we have some time in the last ten minutes to talk about, size and status protests. What when you are talking about you know, we've been talking about bid protests thus far as the protester. What happens if you get the award and then you are protested? Because it is a challenge to the agency, the agency is going to step in and defend the award. But it is very important that you as the awardee also intervene, enter the fray, become a party to the case so that you can monitor what's going on and represent your own interests. They align with the government right now, but they may converge or government counsel might need help. So it's very important that you not just sit back and be passive and let the government run with the ball themselves. Intervene in the case. Make sure that you, you know, are are aware of what's going on. Your attorney can look at the documents, and then you can modulate your efforts and your legal costs from there. Alright. So we talked a little bit before about set aside contracts and eligibility. But, again, these are you know, we're talking about AI and status protests are challenges to, you know, an awardee or awardee's eligibility on set aside contracts. So you've got contracts that are set aside for small businesses, and then you've got contracts that are set aside for specific types of small businesses. You've got you know, small businesses are when you've got a a contract with a a NAICS code and associated size standard, whether it's in terms of employees or in terms of, average annual revenue or, excuse me, average annual receipts. You know, companies that fall above that threshold are going to be considered other than small. Companies that fall below are going to be considered small. If you've got questions about how to determine your size, I'm happy to talk to you about it offline. That's how you determine a small business. Eight a companies are companies that are, small, but that are majority owned and unconditionally controlled by individuals who are economically and socially disadvantaged, and US citizens of good character, and the companies have potential for success. Hub zones are companies that are located in areas called historically underutilized business zones and also have thirty five percent of their employees located in a HUBZone. Veteran owned small businesses and service disabled veteran owned small businesses are small businesses that are majority owned and controlled by veterans or service disabled veterans. And women owned small business or WASB and economically disadvantaged women owned small business, EDWSB, are companies that are small and fifty one percent owned and controlled by women. And in the case of EDWSB, women who are economically disadvantaged. Obviously, each one of those kind of eligibility criteria is extremely nuanced, and the idea is going to be that, you know, you guard yourself and you AI do a compliance checkup to make sure that you're not running a foul of the regulations in a way that would defy, you know, or nullify your status and that you're kinda trying to come up with arguments about your competitors not meeting those criteria. The biggest issues that, you know, are usually at stake in size and status protests are affiliation, which is something that impacts size. If two companies are deemed to be affiliated, it can push them over the applicable size threshold. Notice that I said in all of the the scenarios for eight a, you know, the veteran owned program and the woman owned program, that you've gotta have certain individuals unconditionally owning and unconditionally controlling. So those are going to be things that come up. The idea being that, you know, the the veteran or the service disabled veteran or the woman or the economically and socially disadvantaged individual doesn't own or AI sorry, doesn't control the company. Oftentimes, those are gonna be tied to the affiliation issues. A lot of AI, these come up in the context of teaming joint venture or mentor protege mistakes, and you're gonna see also mistakes made on multiple award contracts, vehicles, and and recertification issues when you're talking about, you know, long term contracts. Size and status protests, again, the the why is always going to be, you know, that you're challenging, that that someone isn't actually small, that they aren't actually meeting the other eligibility criteria. It's not the same as bid protests where you're challenging that the government did something wrong in the source selection process. There are size protests, and then there are status protests. They are governed by different sections of the regulation. I'm not gonna read them here because they're just numbers. But for those of you who are interested, you can see on this screen where you can find the the regulations dealing with each. One of the key things that I would keep in mind is that with the eight a program, there are no status protests. You can only protest size. For the rest of them, you can protest size and status. It's just a question of how you file and and where you file and if you file different documents. Similar to bid protests, you have to have standing. Only an interested party can file a protest. Generally, that's going to mean that you are an eligible, you know, contractor that could have gone after or did go after this contract. These issues can actually become far more complicated than you would think, but you wanna make sure that you have standing to file a protest. Otherwise, it's going to be kicked out. What you file, again, similar to bid protests before the agency or the the the, GAO, Usually, a letter brief just outlining all of the reasons that you think the, you know, your competitor does not meet the eligibility criteria. Why do you think they're affiliated? What are the facts that back that up? Why do you think that the vet or the woman or whatever the case may be is not in control of the company? Again, these are things that should not just be speculations, not just be throwing accusations against the wall and seeing what sticks. Obviously, you as an outsider are going to have limited information about a company, but the idea is trying to come up with, you know, factual information that is publicly available or that is known to you and then using logical extrapolation to prove why in the context of the regulations that means that this company is not eligible. Where you AI, and this is one of those areas where, you know, making sure you understand whether you're in bid protest land or size and status protest land is really important because size and status protests do not get filed as many people think with the GAO. They are filed with the contracting officer who then forwards them to the appropriate body or bodies at SBA. And depending on what program you're dealing with, you know, the woman owned versus eight a versus SDVOSB, etcetera, the size and the status protests are going to be separated and adjudicated separately. The area offices deal with the size protests. And for, you know, for example, the SDVOS b, you've got OHA dealing with the status size. When you've got, you know, women owned, you've got, you know, a different entity dealing with the the status section. Some programs, you can file one document that is both a size and status protest, and some, you need to file separate ones even if they kind of have overlapping facts. And, again, that's all gonna depend on the regs and what program you're dealing with. So something you should talk about with your legal professional. Like everything with protests, this is another area where you've got very, very short deadlines. You're looking at a five day deadline to file your protest. In terms of what happens after that, you know, you're you're gonna go through a process where AI bid protests where the protester is still kind of involved, and there's additional briefing and you're making additional arguments, in a size and status protest for the most part, and there are some exceptions, but for the most part, once you file your protest, it's kinda out of your hands. It's between the SBA and the protested concern to figure out where they go from there and if it's, you know, if they're eligible or not. There's not a lot of input from you. There are some opportunities for input, with the new SDVSB OHA status protests, But, generally, it's gonna be, you know, down to the the protested concern, the awardee whose eligibility has been challenged to defend themselves. If you are the protested concern, you do have a chance to defend yourself. One of the big things that's really important to keep in mind is that this is not like a bid protest. The agency is not going to step in to defend the award. Bid protests, the the challenge is that the agency did something incorrectly. Remember, size and status protests, there's no allegation that the agency did anything wrong. The idea is just that the company that won or one of the companies that won or the companies that won are not eligible. So it's up to those companies to step in and defend their own eligibility. So if you are the awardee and someone files a size and or status protest against you, you know, it's not gonna be intervention the way it is at bid protest land, and it's not gonna be anyone else defending you and you assisting. It's all on you. You are carrying the laboring or you have to defend your own eligibility. You will be asked by the SBA to submit a whole bunch of documents, usually, you know, your tax, your company corporate taxes, your fiscal statements, your corporate government documents, you know, potentially depending on whether subcontract or teaming agreements or joint venture or metro protege are at issue, all of those. They will ask you for a substantive response to the protest itself, and they will usually have you they will always have you fill out a form three fifty AI, an SBA three fifty five. So, again, the deadlines for this are really short. Oftentimes, the SBA wants those documents in three or five days. If you reach out quickly, you can usually get an extension. But another reason why, you know, you wanna bring your attorney in as soon as possible and get moving on that so that you can defend yourself. If you fail to file a defense, generally, you're out. That's it. You're not eligible. And oftentimes, it's not gonna be just for the contract that was protested. You've gotta remove the certification and potentially go through a recertification process and in the meantime cannot compete for any other contracts that require that eligibility. So you really need to make sure you do your your utmost to defend against a finding of noneligibility. So with that, I know we're out of time, but we got started a little bit late. So I'm gonna stick around to to ask, to answer the questions that we've got in the chat and the q and a. But if you have to leave, you know, feel free to reach out to me directly. You've got my contact information. AI pull it back on the screen. And remember that you will get a copy of the slides and a recording, and you can always reach out to me. Alright. So what is LPTA? LPTA is lowest price technically acceptable. It's a process or or or AI of contracting by negotiation under FAR part fifteen, where instead of having price and non price factors and doing kind of a best value trade off where they say, okay. This guy was more expensive, but they blew it out of the park on technical. This guy was a little bit cheaper, but they were far inferior in terms of technical. So, you know, it's worth the price premium. That's the kind of thing that they'll do generally on a best value trade off. Lowest price technically acceptable is a little bit like the the things in amusement parks where you must be this high to ride the ride. You've gotta do a certain amount to kind of be deemed, quote, unquote, technically acceptable, and then it just goes to anyone who kind of meets that criteria now who is the cheapest. As you might have guessed, that's very hard for contractors to to bid, you know, or to price accurately. Contractors don't like it. It was becoming more and more and more frequently used. Contractors pushed back a couple years ago. They they modified the regs of when it was appropriate to use LPTA and when it was not. So, you know, sometimes you might wanna have a protest where the the the the agency should not be using LPTA, and they are. Again, for the people who asked, am I gonna get slides or am I gonna get recordings? Yes. You will get both. Alright. I think there are some specific questions. Yeah. Yeah. AI was trying to go through the chat first, so we've got some other ones. And and real quick, the one that said can't have a size protest for eight a, you can't have a status protest for eight a. You can have a size protest. And okay. If you've got more for me, I'm listening. Okay. So the first one is can a bid generally state that they have the right to choose any vendor based on the best interest of the organization? I mean, it's gonna depend on, you know, what the what section of the FAR they're using. You know, generally, the the language is going to be best value or is going to be lowest price, you know, the responsive and responsible bidder that has the lowest price. It's hard to answer that in a vacuum because I don't know what section of the the FAR, you you know, this particular procurement is related to. Best interest is not something that generally is an appropriate, designation. I also don't know if perhaps, you know, given that they're talking about a, quote, unquote, organization, if this is a a nonfederal government contract. But AI I think, you know, if you've got questions about specific solicitation, I'm happy to talk to you about it offline. Perfect. Another one is, what can you do if you don't receive the debriefing till after the protest date ended? Well, so if it's a required debriefing situation, you the the the protest deadline is not until five or ten days after you get the debriefing. So it's necessarily going to be before your protest deadline in a required debriefing scenario because the deadline is ten days from the debriefing. If you're talking about a scenario where you're not entitled to a debriefing, then it becomes a question of, you know, what do we we know now? Do we have enough to file a protest? Do we have a basis or not? And you kinda have to make a decision based on the information you have at hand. If you have enough to file a protest, great. If you don't, you try to figure out if there's enough to get you to the next stage where you get more documents. But that's why, you know, it's it's much harder to file a protest if you're not in a required debriefing scenario. Got it. The next question is, what if you feel a business is not a smith? What if you feel a business is not a small business? Still go through CEO who refers to SBA? Yes. So, exactly, that's when you would file, you know, a size or a status protest if specifically you're saying they're not a small business. It's a size protest that goes to the contracting officer. They then send that to the SBA. If it's a size protest, they're going to decide it in accordance with thirteen CFR one twenty one one zero one and sequence, and it's a size protest. And that's gonna determine the eligibility of the company. Okay. The next question is, is the agency obligated to disclose why your company was not successful in the bid? So one of the things that you get in a debrief is, you know, AI, you know, the the the weaknesses or the deficiencies in your own proposal. If you're dealing with a non debrief scenario, you know, not AI debrief, you may be AI entitled to a, quote, unquote, brief explanation. That's a lot more ephemeral. There aren't as many, like, you know, bullet point things that the government needs to provide you. But generally speaking, the idea is that, yes, they're supposed to tell you, you know, what was wrong or or what the deficiencies were in your own proposal. You're not always gonna get that if it's not a required debriefing scenario. If it's a required debriefing scenario, you're absolutely gonna get it. If it's a brief explanation, it might be the government's discretion. But, you know, you're generally gonna wanna push them on that in a in a polite and noncombative way, you know, not even just for protest purposes, but to figure out how to improve going forward. Okay. We have a couple more. Can advisories be submitted by groups that have secondhand connections to interested parties in brackets, special interest groups, nonprofits, etcetera? And if so, what do those look like? So I'm not sure what you mean by advisories. I don't know if you can specify. It says a non risk attendee if you're still on and you want to to specify what you mean by that. But generally speaking, no. It's gotta be, you know, the the company itself that is the interested party and has standing. They would be the ones. You know? You you can't even if you're dealing with a team or a joint venture, you know, the subcontractor, for example, in a teaming agreement, even if they're the larger contractor, can't be the one to to pursue the protest. You've gotta talk about the actual prime contractor that is the interested party that, you know, either is or or would have been, you know, someone competing for the contract if not for the issue that's being protested. Okay. Couples more. I think this one should reach out to you directly, but it says AI company filed a protest on a bid. The winner was a clearing house for contracting with well over hundred NAICS codes. We protested that they were not technically the best. We were determined, not to have standing since we didn't come in second in the bid. The SBA backed us backed up this decision. How do we protest companies when in contracts when they are such a blatant contract hunter? How do we ensure we have someone that will hear what we have to say? Yeah. So I think I think you're right. I think that's probably a a conversation to have offline because it seems very specific. But what I can say, generally, is that there seem to be two different issues here. You know, are we talking about a bid protest where they were not the the best value? Because, you know, we protested, and and they were not technically the best. Seems like a bid protest issue. But when you're talking about the the SBA being involved in the NAICS codes, it seems like you're talking about their eligibility. So I think the the first thing is to get clear on whether we're talking about potential bid protests or potential size slash status protests. In terms of bid protests, it's not necessarily a problem that people go after and and win a ton of contracts. You know, as as long as they are competent and responsible and doing what they're supposed to do on each of the contracts, you know, having a lot of experience and and, quote, unquote, being a contract hunter is not necessarily a a bad thing. If what you are talking about is in the small business realm, the fact that they have so many contracts, meaning that they're probably larger than they're, you know, purported to be or or representing themselves to be, then, yeah, that would be a a question of a a size or status protest. And, unfortunately, you do need to have standing in order to protest those, but, generally, you don't have to be ranked the same way that you do for a bid protest. So I think I'm happy to talk to you offline, but it seems like there's some confusion over whether we're talking about bid protest land or or size and and status protest land and kind of there's a there's a different answer in terms of how you would go after a quote, unquote contract hunter. Contract hunters, you know, seemingly implies that they're too large to be small, which would be a size protest. Contract hunter in the bid protest world, as long as they're legitimately performing the contracts and doing a good job, companies are allowed to get as many contracts as they can handle. So there's no problem with that. And I I think even this other one might wanna should talk to you directly. It's some agencies only allow OEM certified vendors, but we are direct competitors who will never be certified by the OEM. I often question this, but some entities will not budge and therefore not even consider a bid response. Yeah. Again, I think that's that's probably potentially an an overly restrictive or unduly restrictive type of argument. But it depend on what agency you're dealing with, what the nature of the contract is, what their justification is for requiring that there there only be certified vendors. But, sure, I mean, that's that's a potential unduly restrictive pre award protest. Perfect. I think it's all the questions that I could see, and I know we've gone a little over time. And, Maria, I wanna thank you so much for, host doing this presentation, which has been super informative. Thank you for staying on, answering all the questions. For all of peep all of those who are on the phone, Like Maria said, we are gonna be sending the presentation, and, we will also we have three more presentations with Maria coming up in the next six months. They'll be in the slides that will go to you. And AI guess that's it. Thank you for joining us, and thank you, Maria, for everything you do for not just us, but all the businesses that Yeah. Thanks for having me, and feel free to to reach out everyone. Talk to you later.