Background
The Army issued a solicitation for test-and-evaluation support services in January 2023. After an extended procurement, the Army initially awarded the contract to Mitchell Consulting Services Group Inc. in October 2024, reopened the competition following a protest by Defense Testing & Evaluation Support Services JV, LLC, and awarded the contract to DTESS in January 2026.
Mitchell protested, contending that DTESS should have been excluded under the solicitation’s 2018 version of FAR 52.204-7 because DTESS temporarily deactivated its System for Award Management account for approximately 48 hours in June 2025 while updating banking information. The Army then announced corrective action that would terminate DTESS’s award, amend the solicitation to incorporate the current version of FAR 52.204-7—which requires registration when an offer is submitted and at award rather than continuously between those events—revalidate the remaining offerors’ registrations and key personnel, and make a new award decision. Mitchell challenged that corrective action as improperly tailored to preserve DTESS’s eligibility.
The Court’s Holding
The court upheld the corrective action. FAR 1.108(d)(2) gave the contracting officer discretion to incorporate an updated FAR provision into an older solicitation when the resulting contract would be awarded after the provision’s effective date. Although the court declined to decide conclusively whether DTESS’s temporary deactivation broke continuous registration under the former rule—and rejected the government’s assertion that DTESS’s registration definitively remained intact—it found DTESS’s registration status ambiguous.
The court concluded that the Army had a rational basis for resolving that ambiguity through corrective action. The updated clause reflected the FAR Council’s effort to prevent temporary, corrected registration lapses from unnecessarily excluding offerors, and applying it to all competitive-range offerors promoted competition and procurement fairness. The record also supported the Army’s understanding that DTESS deactivated its account while following the prescribed process for updating banking information. The court therefore granted the government’s and DTESS’s motions for judgment on the administrative record, denied Mitchell’s motion, and denied injunctive relief because Mitchell did not succeed on the merits. It also granted in part DTESS’s motion to supplement the administrative record with three exhibits explaining the banking update and temporary deactivation.
Key Takeaways
- FAR 1.108(d)(2) permits a contracting officer to add an updated FAR provision to an earlier solicitation when the resulting award will occur after the update’s effective date.
- An agency may use corrective action to address a genuine ambiguity affecting an offeror’s eligibility, so long as the action has a coherent and reasonable basis.
- The court did not decide whether temporarily deactivating a SAM account necessarily interrupts registration under the 2018 version of FAR 52.204-7.
Why It Matters
The decision confirms substantial agency discretion to modernize solicitation terms during corrective action, particularly where a revised regulation removes an unintended eligibility trap and is applied across the competitive field. A corrective action does not become irrational merely because it prevents a particular offeror’s possible exclusion.
For contractors, the opinion also underscores that active SAM status and registration under the former continuous-registration clause may present a legally significant issue. The court left that question unresolved, making uninterrupted SAM maintenance the safer course whenever an older solicitation still incorporates the 2018 clause.