As you can probably tell from my blog posts, I keep up with GAO protests and their results. It’s a great way to learn from others’ mistakes, and also keep up with industry trends. There’s a lot to learn from just reading the GAO decisions every Sunday.
Case in point – In B-416358, a protest was filed after a failed electronic delivery (delivery of a proposal by email). If you’re interested in the specifics of the protest, and how everything can go wrong in a proposal delivery, you can use the link above to read it for yourself. Here’s what I learned from the protest and subsequent dismissal:
- If you’re going to take the time to proactively submit your proposal two days before the deadline, don’t wait until an hour before the deadline to make sure the contract specialist received it.
- Do not try to send a government agency a zip file, unless you’re sure their system can accept it.
- Likewise, don’t waste your time trying to send a link to Google Drive or another other third-party service.
- If your proposal is over the size limit, and “bounced” by the receiving agency, it won’t be considered “received.”
- If you don’t know the size or program limitations of the receiving agency’s email server, ASK!