GAO protest deadline calculator

The two clocks

Filing on time and protecting the stay are not the same thing.

The filing deadline decides whether GAO will hear you at all. The automatic stay deadline decides whether the agency has to suspend performance while it does. They run from different events and the stay deadline is usually the earlier of the two, which means a protest can be perfectly timely and still let the winner start work.

Where a debriefing is required, the stay runs from the later of ten days after award or five days after the debriefing date offered. The filing deadline, by contrast, is ten days after the debriefing is held. Missing the stay does not end the protest, but it removes most of the leverage, because an agency with work already under way has far less reason to take corrective action.

• Filing deadline: whether GAO hears the protest
• Stay deadline: whether performance stops meanwhile
• The stay deadline usually lands first
• Both are counted in calendar days

Challenging the solicitation itself

This one has to be raised before you bid.

If the problem is apparent on the face of the solicitation, such as a specification only one supplier can meet or an evaluation scheme that contradicts itself, the protest has to be filed before the closing time for receipt of proposals. Not ten days after you notice it, and not after the award goes elsewhere.

This rule catches a lot of contractors. Waiting to see whether you win and then protesting the ground rules is exactly what it forecloses. If something in the document would make the competition unwinnable or unfair, raise it in the question period first, and treat the closing date as the outside limit for a protest.

Because the deadline is the closing time itself, it does not roll to the next working day the way a counted period does.

How the days are counted

Calendar days, with one adjustment at the end.

The periods are calendar days, so weekends and holidays inside the window still count. The only adjustment comes at the end: where the last day falls on a weekend or a federal holiday, the deadline moves to the next working day. This calculator applies that rule and uses the federal holiday schedule, including the Friday or Monday substitution when a fixed-date holiday falls on a weekend.

The clock starts from when the basis of protest was known or should have been known, which is not always the date something arrived in your inbox. Where the ground only became apparent at a debriefing, the debriefing date governs. Where it was apparent from the unsuccessful offeror notice, that date does.

Ask for the debriefing, and ask in time

A required debriefing is what moves the filing clock.

In a negotiated procurement, requesting a debriefing in writing within the permitted window after the award notice is what makes the debriefing required rather than discretionary. That matters twice over: it gives you the information to decide whether a protest has merit, and it moves the filing clock to the debriefing date rather than the award notice.

Request it promptly and in writing. A late request can convert a required debriefing into a courtesy one, which does not extend the protest clock, and contractors have lost the right to protest on that alone.

Where else a protest can go

GAO is one of three routes, with different clocks.

A protest can also be filed with the agency itself, or at the Court of Federal Claims. Agency-level protests are faster and cheaper but decided by the buyer, and filing one does not pause the GAO clock indefinitely, so the interaction between the two timelines needs care. The Court has no equivalent short filing deadline but also no automatic stay.

This calculator covers GAO timing only. Where you are considering an agency-level protest first and GAO afterwards, the sequencing is exactly the kind of question to put to counsel before the ten days run out rather than after.