On August 22, 2024, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a complaint-in-intervention in a previously filed whistleblower suit under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act (FCA) against the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and Georgia Tech Research Corp. (GTRC), an affiliate of Georgie Tech, for falsely representing its compliance with Department
Under the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) mentor-protégé program, smaller businesses are afforded the tools to compete for government contracts by partnering with larger businesses that serve as mentors to the small businesses. In theory, both the mentor and the protégé benefit under the program, with the mentor gaining access to set-aside small business contracts that
By Stephen Tobin
In 2021, the DOJ announced its Civil-Cyber-Fraud Initiative, which focused on contractors who fail to follow required cybersecurity standards. The initiative is aimed at accountability for knowingly providing deficient cybersecurity products or services, knowingly misrepresenting their cybersecurity practices or protocols, or knowingly violating obligations to monitor and report cybersecurity incidents and breaches.
The System for Award Management (SAM) is the official website for registering to do business with the U.S. government, such as competing for federal procurement contracts. Under FAR 52.204-7, “an Offeror is required to be registered in SAM when submitting an offer or quotation, and shall be registered until time of award, during performance, and
Construction law is a complex field that intersects with various other industries and legal fields, one being the maritime industry. In nearly twenty years of practicing construction law, I have often experienced the connection between these sophisticated areas of law and the implications of each on various projects, such as the construction of docks, breakwaters,
Sanford Federal, Inc., the selected awardee for a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA) contract, learned the hard way that a contractor simply cannot ignore a size protest, regardless of its actual merit.
On August 8, 2023, the VA issued an RFQ for boiler plant safety device testing, calibration and inspection for one of
In Steiner Construction Co., Inc., the Government Accountability Office (GAO) upheld the U.S. Coast Guard’s (USCG) award of a $1.19 billion small business set-aside shipbuilding contract to a business concern that was later determined to be other than a small business. The protestor argued that the Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Hearing and Appeals
On December 26, 2023, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) published the much anticipated proposed rule for the revamped Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 2.0 Program.
Following growing concerns within DoD that contractors were not consistently implementing the cybersecurity requirements of DFARS 252.204-2012, DoD responded with the creation of the CMMC Program in 2019 to
On October 3, 2023, the FAR Council released two proposed rules for federal contractor cybersecurity requirements that relate to cyber threat and incident reporting and information sharing (case 2021-017) and standardizing cybersecurity requirements for unclassified federal information systems (case 2021-019). Both proposed rules not only provide new requirements for federal contractors to follow
A contractor recently learned the hard way that if you open an email from an agency regarding a debriefing, you must read it closely and in its entirety, or you may face the consequence of missing the time to protest the agency’s action.
