GovContrActually (Page 9)

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Bidding can be counterintuitive

You know a bid protest is going to be a fun read when the discussion section opens with: "As an initial matter, both protesters argued that BAH could not have submitted a proposal meriting a technical factor rating of outstanding given BAH’s alleged poor performance as the incumbent.

Keeping track of stuff can be hard

The US government — by virtue of being a large bureaucracy that builds and buys stuff — owns stuff. And when the US government contracts with contractors to do things, the US government sometimes gives those contractors the government's stuff so that the contractors can do things for the government.

X-ray vision is 2020

A thing I love about federal contracting is that the government buys all kinds of things in unusual situations. Like this: The United States Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan (embassy), provided medical support to its personnel through an in-house medical clinic. In June 2021, the embassy’s procurement office issued a

K Street needs more chill

A fun thing about large government contractors is that their overhead costs often include things like paying for lobbyists and then they get to charge the government for those overhead costs. A lot of the time these overhead costs are effectively hidden from the government, wrapped into firm-fixed prices or

I'd like it to be rare, please

Suppose you really like to eat, I dunno, ice cream. You maybe have a couple of different brands of ice cream that you choose from time to time, but chances are you really like one brand in particular. If that brand got acquired by another company, you'd probably

Emails to nowhere

Look, we've all been there. Someone gives you their email address and tells you to send them an email. You dutifully copy the address and send them an email. Usually, this all just works and they receive the email! But sometimes it doesn't because there'