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 2 November 2026; later issues carry what has moved since.
28 Oct 2026GAO jurisdictionGAO dismissed Symons Emergency Specialties, Inc. d/b/a Symbiosis's protest of the Department of Veterans Affairs' termination of an option under purchase order 36C26226P0525, placed by the VA Long Beach Healthcare System under RFQ 36C26225Q1093. The VA terminated the option as corrective action after EDG Entities LLC, the IDIQ holder, protested that the option could not be exercised because its price had never been evaluated when the order was awarded; Symbiosis also objected to how EDG was performing, raising the limitations on subcontracting, which entity actually provides the ambulance services, and licensing. GAO held that both grounds are contract administration and outside its bid protest jurisdiction: a challenge to the decision to terminate an option is in substance a challenge to a decision not to exercise it, and performance questions of that kind have never been for GAO. In a footnote it added that even with jurisdiction it would have found no basis to object, because the contracting officer had not evaluated the option pricing at award, so exercising the option would have extended the contract beyond its scope and amounted to a new procurement requiring a noncompetitive justification. Decided 27 October 2026; posted by GAO 28 October 2026.
Go and look at whether the option prices on your orders were actually evaluated at award, because the answer decides whether you have an option or a sole-source buy. If the price was never evaluated, exercising it is not administration — it is a new procurement outside the scope of what was competed, and it needs a justification approved at the level in FAR 6.304 or 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(C). The cheap fix is at award: evaluate every priced option, including the ones you do not expect to use, and say in the award decision that you did. The second thing worth knowing is where the argument lands once it goes wrong. The firm whose option was pulled had no remedy at GAO at all, and the agency's corrective action was effectively unreviewable there; that contractor's route is a claim and the boards, which is slower for everyone and is a reason to get the evaluation right rather than to rely on the forum. And if you are the one taking corrective action, terminating the option is defensible — but write the file so it rests on the unevaluated price, not on dissatisfaction with performance.
GAO, B-424759 →
29 Oct 2026GAO scopeGAO dismissed Veteran Design and Construction Inc.'s protest of a VA reprocurement, contract 36C10F26C0012, awarded to C&C Contractors, LLC on 29 September 2026 to finish and correct work at Cape Canaveral National Cemetery in Florida. The VA had terminated Veteran Design's roughly $33 million contract for default on 13 May 2025, the firm's appeal of that termination is pending at the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals, and the surety declined to complete the work. GAO held that an agency may exclude a defaulted contractor from the reprocurement of the same work even while the default termination is under appeal, so the firm was not an interested party for most of what it raised. It was an interested party on scope, but that argument failed as speculation: the roughly $7 million reprocurement is about 21 percent of the original contract, which squares with the VA's own termination notice estimating that about 20 percent of the work remained, and the agency stated the statement of work was unchanged. A footnote distinguished Steel Point Solutions on the ground that this was discrete, non-recurring construction rather than recurring services, so the passing of the original completion date did not bar reprocurement. Decided 23 October 2026; posted by GAO 29 October 2026.
If you are reprocuring after a default, you do not have to wait for the board to rule before excluding the defaulted firm, and you should not: the exclusion is lawful on its own terms and waiting costs you the schedule. What the file has to carry instead is proof that what you are buying is the work that was left. Write the reprocurement value against a figure you have already committed to — the percentage of remaining work in your termination notice is the obvious one, and it is what carried the day here — and leave the statement of work alone. A reprocurement that quietly grows is the one a protester can reach, because scope is the ground on which a defaulted contractor is still an interested party even after it loses everything else. Two further points for the file: that your contractor claims it finished most of the job does not matter when the contract includes correcting work already done badly, and an expired period of performance does not bar reprocurement of discrete construction, whatever it might mean for recurring services.
GAO, B-419224.2 →
26 Oct 2026CourtsThe Civilian Board of Contract Appeals granted the Department of Health and Human Services' motion to dismiss in part in American Indian Health Service of Chicago, CBCA 8722, an appeal from an Indian Health Service demand for repayment of $204,690.41 in advance payments made under three contracts that incorporated FAR 52.232-12, Advance Payments, in full text. The appellant's former executive director had paid herself and her husband without the board's knowledge or approval; the appellant conceded that $100,231.67 of those payments was unallowable but argued it should not have to repay because it was the victim of fraud and no longer holds the funds. The Board held that the government is required to recover amounts a contractor was not entitled to receive, that whether anyone committed fraud has no bearing on the contract right to repayment, and that absent clear statutory authority no official can waive or except the debt; it also held it has no power to order IHS to pursue the former employees instead. It let the remaining $104,458.74 of premium, hazard and retroactive pay proceed to the facts, and noted in a footnote that HHS could not rely on FAR part 31 or the OMB Uniform Guidance in 2 CFR part 200 to find those costs unallowable, because these contracts incorporated neither. Decided 26 October 2026.
The footnote is the part that should change something on your desk this week. If you expect FAR part 31 or the Uniform Guidance to decide what is allowable, check that the contract in front of you actually incorporates them, because a payment or advance-payments clause alone leaves you arguing allowability out of that clause's own words — and here that was enough to keep $104,458.74 alive that the agency thought was plainly unallowable. The place to fix it is the clause matrix at award, not the demand letter. On recovery, the law gives you less discretion than people assume and that is worth saying out loud to a contractor: that its own officer committed the fraud, that the money is gone, or that repayment will hurt the mission are not defences, and you have no authority to forgive the debt on any of those grounds. Nor can you offer to chase the individuals instead. Issue the demand, document the amounts you can tie to unallowable payments, and keep the amounts you cannot separate from the ones you can.
CBCA 8722 →
30 Oct 2026FAR overhaulThe FAR Council posted Version 3.0 of the FAR Companion on 30 October 2026, as part of the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul and under Executive Order 14275 and OMB Memorandum M-25-26. It updates FC parts 5, 6, 7, 11, 15, 24, 32 and 36 on practitioner and interagency feedback; adds guidance on non-federal past performance, contractor self-assessments, performance monitoring and reprocurement to the next highest-rated offeror; moves common acquisition practices into FC 7.102(a) so they read across the buying pathways; treats outcome-based contracting as a subset of performance-based acquisition; clarifies modular contracting and updates the definitions, procedures and guidance on commercial contracting, including commercial construction; expands construction and architect-engineer guidance; and adds material on contract closeout and termination settlements, on non-FAR authorities such as other transactions, commercial solutions openings and the SBIR/STTR program, and on program management. It also annotates the RFO smart accelerators and the Periodic Table of Acquisition Innovations techniques, and embeds a feedback form.
Read it for the parts you own and cite it for nothing. The Companion is guidance: it is not the codified FAR, it is not your agency's class deviation, and an FC paragraph number in a determination or a J&A supports no part of the determination — anchor what you write to the text your agency is actually operating under. Where 3.0 earns attention is that it now speaks to things that turn into arguments. Reprocurement to the next highest-rated offeror and non-federal past performance are both places where an offeror's counsel will quote the Council's own words back at you, so it is better to know what they say than to meet them cold. The same goes for the commercial construction and architect-engineer material if you buy either. If the guidance and your deviation text point different ways, the deviation governs and the Companion does not change it; note the conflict and raise it through the feedback form rather than splitting the difference in a file.
Acquisition.gov, FAR Companion Version 3.0 →Where every FAR part stands →
27 Oct 2026GAO evaluationGAO denied Kenall-Geo Engineering JV LLC's protest of an Army Corps of Engineers selection under solicitation W51DQV25RA012, a small business pool for architect-engineer services in the Caribbean basin run as a Brooks Act procurement. The joint venture argued the Corps applied unstated criteria by weighing whether offerors had performed as prime contractors rather than subcontractors and by rating it lower for lacking experience across all the enumerated military facility types and with military projects in the Caribbean, and that discussions were unreasonable because the Corps never asked about its reliance on subcontractors. GAO held that the solicitation incorporated Corps pamphlet EP 715-1-7, which calls for evaluating management structure and subcontractors, so looking at prime involvement was not an unstated criterion; that the regional concern tracked the solicitation's own reference to regions of high seismic and hurricane hazard; and that FAR part 15's meaningful-discussions principles do not apply to a Brooks Act selection, where discussions are informational and the agency need not raise subcontractor-specific questions or grant clarifications. GAO also noted that its review does not reach internal agency guidance, and that it considered EP 715-1-7 only because the solicitation incorporated it. Decided 20 October 2026; posted by GAO 27 October 2026.
If you run architect-engineer selections, stop importing part 15 habits into them. You are not obliged to raise every significant weakness, to ask the question that would let a firm repair its submission, or to give clarifications on request, and a protest built on those duties fails — which is the useful half of this decision. The other half is the condition on it. The Corps won because the pamphlet its board was actually applying was incorporated into the solicitation; GAO said plainly that it does not review internal agency guidance and reached EP 715-1-7 only through that incorporation. So check your own A-E solicitation for the reference, and check that every standard the selection board uses is traceable to words in the solicitation — including regional, seismic or hazard-specific concerns, which read as unstated criteria the moment the solicitation does not mention them. A selection run on guidance the solicitation never names is the one that has no defence.
GAO, B-424680, B-424680.3 →
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.