Proposals that fail to satisfy the material terms of a solicitation for a negotiated procurement are considered unacceptable and may not form the basis of an award. It is well-established that it is the offeror’s responsibility to submit an adequately written proposal in accordance with the solicitation’s terms that contains all the required information. Despite this obligation, offerors may inadvertently omit necessary information from their proposals. Similarly, proposals may inadequately address or otherwise fail to convey information required by the solicitation. In such cases, the offeror risks adverse evaluation by the procuring agency or elimination from the competition altogether. Protests challenging the agency’s adverse decisions in such cases can have a low success rate because the Government Accountability Office (GAO) does not reevaluate proposals or substitute its judgment for that of the agency but only ensures the reasonableness of the evaluation against the stated evaluation criteria and applicable procurement laws and regulations. Contractors should also be mindful that their disagreement with the agency’s judgment alone is insufficient to establish the unreasonableness of the evaluation. Furthermore, while the agency may elect to seek clarifications, when a solicitation contemplates award without discussions, providing an opportunity for offerors to resolve even minor or clerical errors in their proposals is firmly within the agency’s discretion, as there is no automatic right to clarifications.

Generally, when a government contract solicitation sets forth requirements in specific terms, interested offerors are required to meet them precisely. This is especially true for material requirements which must be satisfied in order for an offeror’s proposal to be considered technically acceptable for award. However, in certain limited circumstances the procuring agency may relax or waive material solicitation requirements in making an award, if the proposed solution meets the government’s needs and there is no prejudice to the other offerors. In such cases, it is insufficient for a protester seeking to challenge the government’s waiver of material solicitation requirements to merely show that it would have been next in line for award, or that the awardee would have been unsuccessful but for the waiver. Rather, the existence of competitive prejudice is established by demonstrating that the protester would have altered its proposal to its advantage or could have done something different to improve its chances for award had it been afforded the opportunity to submit a response to the changed solicitation requirements.

In B-423821.2; B-423821.3, a decision issued on April 20, 2026, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) denied a protest challenging the agency’s waiver of material solicitation requirements in making the award because the protester failed to demonstrate competitive prejudice. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) issued a $43,712,124 task order under an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract for operation, maintenance, and facility management services at various Defense Health Agency (DHA) facilities in Germany, Belgium, and Italy. For the portion of the work to be performed in Italy, the request for proposals (RFP) required offerors to register for an anti-mafia screening white list. During discussions, the USACE reiterated the white list requirement, explaining that offerors were required to initiate the registration process with a local government official known as a prefetto before submitting their proposals. Prospective offerors were advised that they had to include evidence of having initiated the registration process with their proposal submissions.

When federal agencies communicate with offerors in a Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) procurement conducted under Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 8, the exchanges must be fair and equitable, as with all other aspects of the procurement. While the requirements of contracting by negotiation in FAR Part 15 do not apply to procurements conducted under FAR Part 8, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) still looks to FAR Part 15 standards for guidance in determining whether post-proposal exchanges in a FAR Part 8 procurement were fair and equitable. In this regard, when conducting exchanges after the receipt of proposals in FAR Part 15 procurements, government acquisition personnel are prohibited from engaging in conduct favoring one offeror over another. In FAR Part 15 procurements, exchanges undertaken after the establishment of a competitive range with the intent of allowing offerors to revise their proposals are called discussions. Agencies must conduct discussions with all offerors in the competitive range. Meanwhile, in FAR Part 8 procurements, it is permissible to conduct post-proposal exchanges with only the best-suited contractor, even addressing technical or price issues, provided the solicitation advises all offerors of the agency’s intent to conduct such exchanges. Thus, GAO will not sustain post-award protests in such procurements that challenge an agency’s unilateral exchanges with the best-suited offeror to resolve any issues after the receipt of proposals.