The protester filed a GAO protest after its agency protest was denied. GAO found the protest was untimely because it was filed more than 10 days after the agency protest had been denied. The protester’s counsel admitted that he lacked experience filing GAO protests and didn’t understand the filing deadlines. He asked that GAO not punish his client for his mistakes. Alas, GAO was not in a forgiving mood.
Frontier Technologies, GAO B-420878
Background
The Army issued a solicitation seeking practice mine canisters. The solicitation required offerors to submit via the DOD SAFE website.
Frontier Technologies attempted to submit via the website but encountered an instruction stating that the website could not be used for proposal submission. So Frontier emailed its proposal. The Army rejected the proposal because it wasn’t properly submitted.
Frontier filed an agency protest. The agency emailed Frontier's counsel on June 21, 2022, denying the protest. Frontier filed a GAO protest at 7:44 pm on July 8, 2022.
Analysis
GAO dismissed the protest as untimely. When a protest is filed with an agency, any subsequent protest to GAO must be filed within 10 days after adverse agency action. Here, the Army denied the agency protest on June 21. Frontier didn’t file the GAO protest until July 8, after 10 days had passed.
Frontier argued the protest was not late because its counsel had been on vacation on June 21 when the decision was sent. He did not learn about it until June 27 when he was home. But even if GAO assumed that counsel learned of the decision on June 27, the protest was still late. Under GAO’s EPDS a document is filed on a particular day when it is received by 5:30 pm. Documents received after 5:30 are considered to be filed on the following business day. Frontier submitted its protest at 7:44 on Friday July 8. This meant its protest was actually filed the following Monday on July 11, which was still more than 10 days after June 27.
Frontier’s counsel argued that he had lacked experience filing protests at GAO and misunderstood the deadlines. He asked that GAO not punish Frontier for his misunderstanding. But GAO was not persuaded by this plea for mercy.
Frontier is represented by Matthew D. Fischer of Fischer Law Office. The agency is represented by Debra J. Talley of the Army. GAO attorneys Heather Self and Peter H. Tran participated in the preparation of the decision.