New decisions, rules and guidance a contracting officer should know about, with the line that actually matters. This issue is as it was published on 14 September 2026; later issues carry what has moved since.
9 Sep 2026GAO sustainGAO sustained Ares Enterprise’s protest of a Space Force EITaaS order placed under a BPA with a Contractor Teaming Arrangement. The order reached well past the BPA’s end-user and help-desk scope, and the agency never showed that the labor categories it needed were on the order recipient’s own FSS contract. GAO recommended terminating the order, competing the requirement and paying Ares’s protest costs. Decided 3 September; posted by GAO 9 September.
Before you place an order under a CTA-based BPA, put two things in the file: that the work fits the BPA’s scope, and that each labor category is on the order recipient’s own schedule contract. A teaming arrangement does not lend one member’s schedule to another.
Ares Enterprise, LLC, B-424548 et al. →
10 Sep 2026GAO sustainUSCIS took corrective action on a DevSecOps RFQ allowing up to three task orders and said it would consider only LightFeather for the third, without comparing it to FusionEdge or other technically acceptable vendors. GAO sustained that part of FusionEdge’s protest: the record did not support the agency’s claim that it had already ruled FusionEdge out, and nothing allowed it to narrow the tradeoff that way. Evaluation challenges were denied. Decided 27 August; posted by GAO 10 September.
If corrective action reopens an award decision, the new tradeoff has to cover every quote still eligible under the solicitation’s terms. An after-the-fact explanation of why a vendor was already out of the running won’t hold unless the original source selection document says so.
FusionEdge Solutions, LLC, B-423829.2, .7 →
11 Sep 2026GAO timelinessOready emailed three Bureau of Indian Education contracting officers copies of the protests it was filing at GAO over the terms of three therapy-services RFQs, then filed at GAO after the close of business, so the filings were treated as made the next business day and dismissed as untimely challenges to solicitation terms. On reconsideration Oready argued the emails were themselves timely agency-level protests under FAR 33.103, which would have made the GAO filings subsequent protests. GAO denied reconsideration: the emails asked GAO for relief rather than the agency, and were not addressed to the contracting officer or another official designated to receive protests. Decided 10 September; posted by GAO 11 September.
When a vendor copies you on something it is filing at GAO, that is not an agency-level protest — it does not start a FAR 33.103 clock and there is nothing for you to decide. The flip side is the part that bites: an email that does ask you for a ruling is an agency protest whatever it is titled, so read what lands in your inbox for what it requests, and put your reading of it in the file either way.
Oready, LLC, B-424508.2 et al. →
Every item links its primary source. Figures and paragraph numbers are as of the issue date; check the current text before one goes in a file. Found an error? Tell us.