Counsel Commentary: FAR Council Clarifies SAM Registration Rule

For the past several years, many government contractors have seen their proposals eliminated because they allowed their registration in the System for Award Management (SAM) to expire between submission and contract award. SAM registration is required to comply with the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) clause FAR 52.204-7 (b)(1). Recent bid protest decisions from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and Court of Federal Claims (COFC) underscored this longstanding requirement to maintain SAM registration between submission and award.

To provide government contractors with more clarity, the FAR Council issued an Interim Rule late last year to remove the continuous registration requirement. According to the rule, offerors are now required to be registered in SAM when submitting an offer or quotation and at the time of the award, but not during the entire pre-award period. 

In his monthly Contract Management Magazine column, “FAR Council Clarifies SAM Registration Rule,” Rogers Joseph O’Donnell shareholder Stephen L. Bacon explains the rule and future implications for offerors. He also discusses several protests, such as TLS Joint Venture, LLC and Hanford Tank Disposition Alliance LLC v. United States, that led to the change.

“GAO’s decision in TLS Joint Venture underscores the need for contractors to allow sufficient time to complete all parts of the registration process sequence before proposals are due,” Bacon writes.

The piece, which appears in the magazine’s March issue (subscription required), is the latest entry in Bacon’s monthly Counsel Commentary column and is published by the National Contract Management Association. It was used with permission.

Read Bacon’s latest Contract Management article here.