# Question 46: The Protest That Keeps the Stay

## Your role

You represent Silverline Mapping, an unsuccessful bidder for a fictional Federal Survey Authority contract. Silverline wants to protest the award. Several filing paths remain available, but only one timely filing preserves an automatic stay of performance.

## Governing law

Assume the following procurement rules apply:

1. A protest based on an apparent solicitation defect must be filed before the bid deadline. A bidder that submits without timely protesting an obvious term waives that ground.

2. A post-award protest to the Procurement Review Board must be filed within ten calendar days after the protester knew or should have known the basis. The day of knowledge is excluded.

3. A required debriefing delays knowledge of matters first disclosed there. It does not revive an apparent solicitation defect.

4. Award performance is automatically stayed only if the Board receives the protest by the later of: (a) ten calendar days after award notice; or (b) five calendar days after the required debriefing. The triggering day is excluded.

5. A timely merits protest filed after the automatic-stay deadline may proceed, but performance continues unless the Board or a court grants discretionary relief.

6. An agency-level protest does not trigger the Board's automatic stay and does not toll either Board deadline unless the agency issues a written suspension before the Board deadline expires.

7. A court may issue an injunction based on likely success, irreparable harm, balance of harms, and public interest. Filing in court creates no automatic stay.

8. The protest must state each ground, the supporting facts then known, requested relief, and any request for protected access to procurement records. Later supplementation is permitted for facts first learned from the agency report.

9. Calendar days include weekends. If a deadline falls on a day the Board is closed, filing is due the next open day. The Board is open on every date relevant here.

## Facts

The Authority issued its award notice to Silverline on Wednesday, September 1, 2027. The notice selected Atlas Meridian for a $28 million mapping contract.

Before bids were due, the solicitation openly required five years of polar-region experience. Silverline had only three years but submitted without protest. It now argues that the requirement was unnecessarily restrictive.

The Authority held Silverline's required debriefing on Saturday, September 4. For the first time, the Authority disclosed that:

* It credited Atlas with a sensor-resolution score based on a model Atlas did not identify in its proposal.
* It treated Silverline's subcontractor experience as worth zero despite a solicitation clause stating that relevant subcontractor experience "will be considered."
* Atlas's evaluated price was $1.8 million higher, but the Authority selected it based on the disputed technical scoring.

Silverline received the written debriefing slides the same day. Today is Tuesday, September 7. Management proposes first filing an agency protest on September 10 and waiting for the agency's answer before going to the Board. The agency has made no written commitment to suspend performance.

Atlas is scheduled to begin transition work on September 13. Silverline spent $620,000 preparing its proposal and estimates that transition will make meaningful corrective competition harder, but proposal costs alone do not establish irreparable harm.

## Assignment

Provide an ordered protest plan addressing:

* The waived solicitation ground.
* The date Silverline knew the post-award grounds.
* The ten-calendar-day Board merits deadline.
* The two alternative automatic-stay calculations and which date controls.
* The last filing date that preserves the automatic stay.
* Why the proposed agency-first sequence does or does not protect the stay.
* The grounds to include in the initial Board protest.
* The role of protected-record access and supplementation.
* Court relief if the automatic stay is lost.
* The exact filing sequence Silverline should use to preserve the strongest procedural position.

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