Untimely Protests of Contract Awards

A company protested the award of four contracts by the Defense Personnel Support Center, Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), and the award of one contract by the Veterans Administration (VA). The company initially protested each of the contract awards to the appropriate agency, with one exception. In each of those cases, the agency denied the protest. If a protest has been filed initially with the contracting agency, any subsequent protest to GAO must be filed within 10 working days of formal notification of the denial of the protest. Because the company filed the protests with GAO more than 10 days after it received the DLA and VA protest denials, the protests were untimely. The remaining protest was initially filed with an agency that was not the contracting agency and, therefore, the subsequent protest the company filed with GAO constitutes the initial filing of the protest. Because the protest was filed with GAO more than 10 working days after the basis for the protest was known, it was untimely. The protests were dismissed.