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Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Protest: Intervenor’s Silence Waives Future Protest Grounds

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 05.05.21

When is the deadline to file a bid protest, and what actions or inactions can cause potential future protest arguments to be waived?  These seemingly simple questions can have surprising answers.  In a recent bid protest decision, GAO held that a contract awardee can waive potential protest grounds by failing to raise them when intervening in a competitor’s bid protest of its award.  See VS2, LLC, B-418942.4, B-418942.5, Feb. 25, 2021, 2021 CPD ¶ --, 2021 WL 873343.  C&M’s Eric Ransom and Rob Sneckenberg explain the VS2 decision and provide useful takeaways for contract awardees in this “Feature Comment” published in The Government Contractor.

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Client Alert | 3 min read | 07.10.26

Federal Circuit Clarifies Application of Blue & Gold: Proposal Submission Deadline, Not Award, is the Operative Time for Filing

In Utech, Inc. v. United States, No. 24-1586 (Fed. Cir. June 24, 2026), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit clarified that in most cases, a pre-award protest must be filed before the proposal submission deadline to avoid the Blue & Gold waiver rule.  This decision, while nonprecedential, is in line with U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) precedent, which has long held that pre-award protests must be filed before the proposal submission deadline....