The protester challenged the terms of three solicitations, arguing they contained restrictive provisions that unjustifiably limited competition. The protester submitted the protests on the day quotations were due, but after GAP had closed at 5:30. The protester claimed its filings were timely because it emailed copies of its protests to the contracting officer before each solicitation's closing time, which it argued qualified as agency-level protests triggering a timeliness exception. GAO disagreed and dismissed the protests as untimely. The protester had clearly intended to file the protests with GAO, not the agency. They were not agency protests and could not fall into an exception for agency protests.
Oready, LLC, GAO, B-424508; B-424509; B-424510
- Background - The agency issued three solicitations seeking occupational therapy, certified occupational therapy assistant, and speech/language therapy services. Each solicitation set a closing time of 5:00 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time on May 15, 2026. The protester submitted three protests to GAO that same evening, but each arrived after GAO's 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time cutoff. As a result, GAO treated each protest as filed on the next business day, May 18, which was after each solicitation had closed. The agency moved to dismiss all three protests as untimely.
- Agency Protests? - The protester acknowledged that under GAO's standard timeliness rule, challenges to solicitation terms must be filed before the closing time for receipt of proposals. Because each protest was entered into GAO's docketing system after the cutoff, all three were deemed filed on May 18, three days after the solicitations closed. Nevertheless, the protester argued that the timeliness exception for subsequent protests filed after a timely agency-level protest should apply. It claimed that by emailing copies of its GAO protests to the contracting officer before the solicitation closing time, it had effectively filed agency-level protests. GAO rejected this creative workaround. Under the FAR, an agency-level protest must request an agency ruling and be addressed to the contracting officer or other cognizant agency official. Here, each email merely transmitted "a copy of the protest filed with GAO," and the attached document was expressly addressed to GAO, cited GAO's Bid Protest Regulations, and requested relief from GAO. None of the materials sought a ruling from the agency. The transmittals could not be reasonably construed as agency-level protests, so the exception did not apply.
The protester is represented by Michael Faro. The government is represented by William B. Blake, Esq., of the Department of the Interior. GAO attorneys Paul N. Wengert, Esq., and Todd Culliton, Esq., participated in the decision.