RAS Enterprises, LLC (B-423802)

You should not care.

Category: Timeliness, agency-level protest

Date: 22 September 2025

URL: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-423802

RAS Enterprises, an SDVOSB of Gulfport, Mississippi, challenges the terms of an RFQ issued by the VA for medical gas cylinders for the Phoenix VA Healthcare System, arguing the solicitation should have required vendors to submit wholesaler distributor licenses with their quotations. RAS filed two agency-level protests raising this issue. After the first, the agency issued an amendment that did not address the licensing requirement but purported to add a FAR clause that was already in the RFQ. After the second protest—filed on the same day as the revised quotation deadline—the agency allowed the deadline to pass and accepted quotations without change.

GAO dismissed the protest as untimely. Under GAO's bid protest regulations, when an agency proceeds with accepting quotations after receiving an agency-level protest challenging solicitation terms, the protester is on notice that the agency will not take the requested corrective action. Timeliness runs from that point—here, the 8 July quotation deadline—not from the subsequent formal dismissal of the agency-level protest on 28 July. RAS filed its GAO protest on 7 August, more than 10 calendar days after the deadline.

RAS argued the agency's prior conduct—purporting to grant relief after the initial quotation deadline during the first agency-level protest—created a reasonable expectation of similar corrective action. GAO acknowledged the agency's confusing conduct but found it did not warrant departure from the settled rule that receipt of quotations constitutes adverse agency action on a pending solicitation challenge.

The protest is dismissed.

Digest

Protest challenging the terms of the solicitation is dismissed as untimely where it was not filed at GAO within 10 days of the solicitation's closing date for receipt of revised proposals, which constituted initial adverse agency action on the protester's agency-level protest.