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 26 October 2026; later issues carry what has moved since.
23 Oct 2026GAO sustainGAO sustained protests by Reliance Test & Technology and Fluor Federal Solutions, LLC against an Air Force award to Strategic Test Solutions, LLC under RFP FA248824RB003, operation and maintenance services supporting research, development, test, evaluation and training at Eglin Air Force Base. The agency inadvertently sent Reliance a pricing overview slide showing every offeror's total evaluated price, then on 3 October 2025 gave the same slide to all three offerors in the competitive range and let them use it in final proposal revisions; STS cut its price by roughly $72 million, Fluor did not change its, and final evaluated prices came in near $1.869 billion for STS against $1.895 billion for Fluor. The head of the contracting activity found a Procurement Integrity Act violation had occurred but had not compromised the procurement, and GAO held that conclusion unsupported by the record: the agency never meaningfully examined when STS finalized reductions that were discretionary business decisions, releasing the information to everyone did not cure the first disclosure because the offerors were not similarly situated when it was made mid-competition, and the data was competitively useful, since the agency's own statisticians could reverse-engineer cost elements and each offeror learned its relative standing. GAO recommended the agency reconsider the disclosure's impact and implement effective mitigation — reevaluating the pre-disclosure initial proposals and making a new award decision on them, or cancelling and resoliciting — and reimburse both protesters' costs. Decided 13 October 2026; posted by GAO 23 October 2026.
If pricing information escapes mid-competition, the instinct to level the field by sending it to everyone is the move that lost this case, and it is worth knowing that before you make it. Equal access after the fact is not equal position: the offeror who saw the numbers first had them while deciding what to do next, and GAO will ask when each offeror finalized its revisions, not merely whether everyone eventually held the same slide. So the determination has to answer that question on the record. Fix the date each affected offeror locked its price, say what in its own files shows the change was planned before the disclosure rather than after, and do not accept a statement that the effect is impossible to quantify as the answer — that sentence is what the agency relied on here and it is quoted back in the decision. Note also that the agency's own analytical capability counted against it: because its statisticians could work backwards from total evaluated price to cost elements, GAO would not treat the figures as uninformative. If the honest answer is that you cannot establish the disclosure made no difference, the choices GAO left are reevaluating the proposals as they stood before it or resoliciting, and picking one now costs less than defending the third option later.
GAO, B-424203.3, B-424203.4 (and B-424203.2) →
23 Oct 2026GAO jurisdictionGAO dismissed as untimely Encon Desbuild JV4, LLC's protest of its exclusion from phase two of a two-phase design-build competition run by Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command under RFP N69450-25-R-0011, a total small business set-aside for multiple construction IDIQ contracts in the southeastern United States. The Navy sent an unsuccessful offeror letter on 2 June 2026 and gave a written debriefing on 24 June summarising the firm's phase one results, including the significant weaknesses assessed under past performance; Encon Desbuild asked questions on 26 June and 9 July, the Navy answered on 9 July, and the protest was filed on 20 July. GAO held that the exception allowing a protest within ten days of a debriefing applies only where the procurement was conducted on competitive proposals and a debriefing was required, and that phase one of a FAR subpart 36.3 selection is neither, because that subpart bars consideration of price in phase one — following Venergy Group, LLC, B-422708 — so the general ten-day rule of 4 C.F.R. § 21.2(a)(2) ran from 24 June. The solicitation's references to FAR part 15 procedures went to phase two rather than the phase one narrowing, the contracting officer's references to RFO FAR 15.206 did not make the debriefing a required one, and the later answers to questions did not restart the clock. Decided 19 October 2026; posted by GAO 23 October 2026.
A debriefing you were not obliged to give is a courtesy, and it does not extend anyone's protest clock — which cuts in your favour here, but only if your own file shows what the firm knew and when. Date the letter and the debriefing, keep what you sent, and keep the questions and your answers, because the timeliness argument that won this case was built entirely out of those documents. The trap on the other side is of your own making: if you describe a phase one exclusion in FAR part 15 language, or cite a part 15 paragraph in your correspondence, you invite the argument that you ran a competitive-proposals procurement and owed a required debriefing. The Navy survived that argument because the solicitation confined part 15 to phase two; a less careful solicitation might not. Worth noticing that the contracting officer cited RFO FAR 15.206 and it changed nothing — citing the overhaul deviation text does not convert a phase one narrowing into something it is not, and it does not create a debriefing obligation that FAR subpart 36.3 does not impose. Say plainly in the solicitation which procedures govern which phase, and in a phase one exclusion letter do not promise a debriefing in terms that imply one was required.
GAO, B-423574.2 →
21 Oct 2026CourtsThe Civilian Board of Contract Appeals dismissed Gallium LLC's two appeals against the General Services Administration for lack of jurisdiction, having raised the question itself after the parties had already briefed the merits of a dispute over overtime HVAC costs at a building GSA leases at 1801 L Street NW in Washington. In CBCA 8412 the submissions were invoices that never asked for a contracting officer's decision, and the Board held that the request for a decision remains a jurisdictional prerequisite because the Contract Disputes Act itself requires it at 41 U.S.C. § 7103(a)(1) — unlike the FAR's sum certain requirement, which the Federal Circuit held in ECC International Constructors was not jurisdictional. In CBCA 8370 a 23 January 2025 letter sought $148,836 with no certification at all, and the Board followed the line of cases distinguishing a defective certification, which 41 U.S.C. § 7103(b)(3) makes correctable, from the complete absence of one, which is not. The contracting officer had treated both submissions as claims and issued final decisions on them to move things along; the Board held that without a proper claim no decision is possible and anything the contracting officer does is a nullity, and it refused the parties' joint request to dismiss without prejudice so that a new certified claim could be filed, noting that if those decisions were instead valid, Gallium could not revive its rights with a mirror-image claim and may have lost the costs altogether. Decided 21 October 2026.
The contracting officer in this case did the accommodating thing and it was the damaging thing, so be clear about what you are signing. Before you issue a final decision, check the two items the CDA puts beyond your discretion: that the contractor actually asked you for a decision, and that anything over $100,000 carries a certification. A submission missing either is not a claim, your decision on it has no legal effect, and the appeal built on it dies on jurisdiction after both sides have paid to brief the merits. The right response is a letter saying what is missing and inviting a conforming claim, not a decision that papers over the gap. Note which defects you can still fix: a certification that is present but flawed is correctable and does not defeat jurisdiction, while no certification at all cannot be cured retroactively. And understand what your nullity may have cost the other side — the Board pointed out that if its decisions had been valid, the contractor could not have resubmitted the same claim, so an unnecessary final decision can run the clock on a claim you never had authority to decide. Read your own final decisions against 41 U.S.C. § 7103 before they go out, not after a tribunal asks.
CBCA 8370, 8412 →
23 Oct 2026GAO evaluationGAO denied in part and dismissed in part The MIL Corporation's protest of a Navy award to BAE Systems Technology Solutions & Services, Inc. of a $156,141,117 order for information technology services at the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, issued under request for offers N0042124R3040 on 12 June 2025 to SeaPort-NxG multiple-award contract holders, with five offers received. The Navy found MIL's offer unacceptable because its proposed industrial production manager held a bachelor's degree where the labor category required a master's, and MIL argued the solicitation's substitution provisions let experience stand in for the degree and that applying the requirement was an unstated evaluation criterion. GAO read the solicitation as a whole to give effect to every provision and found the Navy's reading the only reasonable one, because experience could substitute for a degree only in the labor categories that expressly allowed it and this one did not; MIL's reading would have drained the selective substitution language of meaning. Because an offer properly found unacceptable is unawardable, MIL was not an interested party under 4 C.F.R. § 21.0(a)(1) and its remaining allegations about the sample task evaluation and an organizational conflict of interest were dismissed without reaching them. Jurisdiction rested on 10 U.S.C. § 3406(f)(1)(B), the order exceeding $35 million. Decided 19 October 2026; posted by GAO 23 October 2026.
Write the substitution rule category by category or expect to litigate it, because a general sentence about experience substituting for education reads as a global permission to the offeror who needs it. If some categories allow the trade and others do not, say so in each one, and when a category is genuinely degree-only, say that too rather than leaving it to be inferred from silence elsewhere. The other half of this is worth more than the drafting point: because the key personnel finding made MIL unawardable, it also stripped MIL of standing to challenge anything else, and GAO never examined the sample task evaluation or the conflict allegation. That makes the acceptability determination the single most load-bearing document in a file like this one — it decides the protest and it forecloses the rest of the protest. Document it to that standard: quote the requirement from the solicitation, state what the proposal offered against it, and show why no substitution provision reached that category. A thin acceptability finding does the opposite, putting the whole evaluation back in play.
GAO, B-424664, B-424664.2 →
19 Oct 2026RulesThe Department of Homeland Security's final rule implementing the Make PPE in America Act (HSAR Case 2024-003), published at 91 FR 59073 on 18 September 2026, took effect on 19 October 2026, adding HSAR subpart 3025.71 together with the clause at 3052.225-71, Make PPE in America, and the provision at 3052.225-72, Make PPE in America Certificate. Contracting officers shall purchase domestic personal protective equipment — defined to cover surgical masks, respirator masks and powered air purifying respirators and their required filters, face shields and protective eyewear, gloves, disposable and reusable surgical and isolation gowns, and head and foot coverings — and HSAR 3025.7103 directs the clause into solicitations and contracts regardless of dollar value whenever a covered item is being bought. HSAR 3025.7102-1(b) separately requires that any contract for personal protective equipment have a base period of performance of at least two years plus all option periods. The exceptions are narrow and held at headquarters: only the DHS Chief Procurement Officer may make the nonavailability or unreasonable cost determination or certify that alternative procedures are needed for a public health emergency, each certification lasts 120 days, and the supporting justification must be concurred in by the head of the contracting activity first.
If you buy for a DHS component, the thing to check first is the absence of a threshold: the clause goes in regardless of dollar value, so a card buy of examination gloves is inside this rule and the usual simplified-acquisition instinct to skip the domestic-source analysis does not apply. The two-year floor is the requirement most likely to catch a buy already in motion, because a one-year PPE requirement with options is no longer a lawful structure under 3025.7102-1(b) and that is a change to the acquisition plan, not to a clause list. Build the schedule before you build the solicitation. On the exceptions, do not plan around one: the determination is the Chief Procurement Officer's alone, it needs the head of the contracting activity's concurrence on the way up, and it expires every 120 days, so a programme relying on foreign-source PPE needs a recertification calendar rather than a single approval. Outside DHS this is still worth reading, because the Act binds other agencies too and this is the first supplement to spell out how one of them is complying.
HSAR Case 2024-003 final rule, 91 FR 59073 →
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