Matt draws from this experience frequently, as it taught him to write clearly and concisely, ask probing questions, and to be courteous. Prior to becoming an attorney, Matt was a reporter for his hometown newspaper in Southern Pines, North Carolina. Robinson. He has represented clients across the entire United States and internationally. District Court District of Kansas in the chamber of the Honorable Julie A. Matt’s first legal job after law school was serving as a clerk at the U.S. Before founding the firm, Matt was a partner at Koprince Law, a federal contracting firm in Lawrence, Kansas.
Matt helps clients with both federal government contracting litigation and transactional matters. Matthew Moriarty is a founding member of Schoonover & Moriarty. For that reason, size investigations do not need to look at them because the SBA has already reviewed them and signed off.ĭoes that mean there’s no way to challenge them? Not necessarily. Sevenson is a good reminder that mentor-protégé agreements go through an approval process and the relationship is vetted and approved not only at the beginning but also throughout the relationship. And third, that the Area Office has no authority to invalidate an existing mentor-protégé agreement, which, after all, is a contract. Second, that it is the program office that determines the sufficiency of a mentor-protégé agreement. First, the protester had offered no evidence that the motives of the mentor and protégé were improper. OHA agreed finding there were three reasons why the Area Office was correct to reject that argument.
The joint venture responded to the appeal arguing that the allegation was not a proper size allegation and that the All Small Mentor-Protégé Program office is “solely responsible for monitoring mentor-protégé relationships.”
OHA’s opinion didn’t reach the discussion of improper motive. How can avoiding the size rules be an improper motive when its expressly allowed by the program? It’s the carrot that entices them to be a part of it. Quick aside: Being able to qualify as a small business joint venture despite one of the members being a large business is one of the few perks of the All Small Mentor-Protégé Program for mentors. It appealed the decision for several reasons, but the most important was that it said that the Area Office failed to adequately consider the argument that the joint venture members had an improper motive to enter into the mentor-protégé relationship and had concealed “the true intent” of the mentor-protégé agreement: to avoid the SBA’s size rules. Sevenson Environmental Services, a competitor, had protested the joint venture’s size and lost. and its SBA-approved mentor APTIM Federal Services–had won the small business set-aside contract. In Sevenson Environmental Services, Inc., a mentor-protégé joint venture called (the alphabet soup friendly) HGL-APTIM, LLC–consisting of the protégé HydroGeoLogic, Inc. Currently, the only way that a large business can ever become a prime contractor on a small business set aside contract is to have an SBA-approved mentor-protégé agreement and to form a compliant joint venture with its protégé.ĭoes that mean that competitors can use the size protest process to allege that the mentor-protégé agreement is somehow deficient? Not according to a recent SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals decision.
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