Before making a decision on whether to protest you should schedule a debriefing. As soon as you receive a notice of not being selected or being eliminated from the competitive range you should send a written request for a debriefing to the CO. If you wait more than three days to send this request the agency will not be required to conduct a debriefing. You may receive a choice of days for your debriefing but it is important to pick the soonest date because to obtain the automatic stay you must file your protest within five days of the first date offered for the debriefing. The stay is particularly important if you are the incumbent since it is likely the agency will allow you to continue performance and thus get paid until the protest is over.

Your goal at the debriefing is to learn as much as possible why your proposal was downgraded, whether your proposal was evaluated in a manner that was consistent with the solicitation and on what basis the agency chose your competitor. Prior to your debriefing you should compile a list of questions to focus on these areas. Its also good to prepare some open-ended questions related to how the agency evaluated your proposal – extended explanations often yield important insights to raise later. Though a point-by-point comparison with other proposals are not permitted, most agencies will at least disclose the awardeee’s ranking under each evaluation factor, the awardee’s total price and the factors that led to the award decision. The debriefing meeting is not the time to criticize the government and put them on the defensive – rather it should be used to elicit as much information as possible to either decide to go further and to identify protestable points to be used later.

We are often asked who should prepare for the briefing meeting and who should attend. The proposal team should be heavily involved in each. For preparation purposes, counsel should be involved to identify areas to probe and what factors would best lead to a positive outcome. Though controversial, we generally believe that lawyers and consultants should not attend the actual debriefing because their presence tends to inhibit the government, making them less forthcoming and often defensive.