Four Years Is a Long Time to Hold a Bid Open
GSA told Polaris small business offerors on Friday that a Court of Federal Claims decision from September requires action before it can proceed with awards. The 102 contracts GSA announced in December 2024 are already on the federal record, filed under a description that tells you not to look at them, and in 657 days they have not carried a single task order.
October 7, 2022 was a Friday, and by four o'clock that afternoon 569 companies had a proposal sitting in GSA's Polaris submission portal.
Four years and nine days later, on another Friday, GSA asked them to come back in.
The notice went up at 2:40pm Eastern on October 16 and runs four sentences.
A Court of Federal Claims decision in BEAT-LDI JV LLC et al. v. The United States, case 25-cv-00082, dated September 10, 2026, "requires GSA to take action prior to proceeding with contract awards." Amendment 0013 is in the portal, and offerors should log in and review the required action.
The sentence underneath is the one to read twice. The amendment applies only to offerors who submitted by October 7, 2022 "and previously extended their offer acceptance period through March 31, 2025."
That date passed 566 days ago.
"What is a four-year-old price worth to the company that quoted it?"
What Amendment 0013 Reaches
The provision doing the work here is FAR 52.215-1(d), and at FAC 2026-01 it still reads the way it has for years: proposals "will be valid for the number of days specified on the solicitation cover sheet (unless a different period is proposed by the offeror)."
So a cover-sheet number sets the clock, and only an amendment moves it. GSA has been moving Polaris clocks since 2023.
Amendment 0008 extended the small business pool in September 2023. Amendment 0009 followed nine days later in response to the SH Synergy and VCH Partners decision of April 21, 2023, the first time the Court of Federal Claims stopped this procurement. Amendment 0011 extended again in September 2024, from a date of September 30 that year. Amendment 0012 swapped in an updated FAR provision that November.
Then GSA announced awards, and the small business pool stopped getting extensions.
The other three pools never stopped. The women-owned pool took Amendment 0013 in March 2025 and Amendment 0014 that December.
HUBZone and SDVOSB each took one on September 16 of this year, both carrying the same line: the pool "remains under review for additional awards; however, the award process will not be completed prior to the end of this fiscal year."
Four pools, 1,293 proposals between them, and every one of those proposals was written for a market that no longer exists (chart below).
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