D+S International, LLC (B-422967)

You should not care.

Category: Patent solicitation defect, untimely protest

Date: 30 December 2024

URL: GAO Case B-422967

D+S International protested its exclusion from a Department of State procurement for architectural and engineering services. The agency disqualified D+S for failing to register its de facto joint venture in the System for Award Management (SAM), as required by the solicitation. D+S argued that the registration requirement was impossible to meet because a de facto joint venture, by definition, lacks formal legal status.

GAO dismissed the protest, finding that the SAM registration requirement was clearly stated in the solicitation and that any ambiguity regarding how a de facto JV could comply created a patent solicitation defect. Under GAO’s rules, such defects must be protested before the proposal submission deadline. GAO noted that it had previously ruled on this issue in a similar case, Pernix Federal, LLC, and declined to apply the “significant issue” exception to its timeliness rules.

GAO dismissed finding the protest was an untimely challenge to the terms of the solicitation, which should have been raised before the proposal deadline.

Digest

Protest that agency unreasonably excluded protester from competition for failing to register its de facto joint venture arrangement in the System for Award Management (SAM) is dismissed as an untimely challenge to the terms of the solicitation, where the defect in the solicitation—the impossibility of registering a de facto joint venture arrangement in SAM—was readily apparent on the face of the solicitation.