Before an agency buys something, it is supposed to look at who could sell it. That look is called market research, and if the research turns up a reasonable expectation of offers from two or more capable small businesses at a fair price, the requirement is supposed to be set aside for them.
NIH did the research in 2024. It found three.
NIH did the acquisition in 2026 under RFP number 75N98026R00042, a multiple award indefinite delivery contract. It decided not to set the work aside at all.
The Three That Vanished
The protest came from LJR Solutions, LLC, a small business in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. GAO docketed it as B-424487, decided it on August 14 and published it on August 24.
The core of the decision is not complicated. The agency's own earlier research had identified three capable small business concerns. The later determination concluded that no small business was capable. Between those two documents the record showed that the marketplace and the requirements did not change.
That is the part that made the determination unreasonable in GAO's view, and it is not a technicality. A set aside decision is a written finding. If the finding reverses itself, the reversal is the thing that has to be justified, and nothing in the file justified it.
The Standard That Excluded Everybody
Then there is the second problem, and it is the better one.
The contracting officer's stated reason for rejecting the small firms was that none of them could independently perform the entire requirement. Set that reason next to the rest of the record and it falls apart in two separate ways.
First, the same record found that no firm could independently perform the entire requirement. Not the small ones. Not the large ones. Nobody. A capability standard that no offeror in the market meets is not a standard that distinguishes between offerors. It is a standard that disqualifies the market.
Second, the solicitation expressly permitted subcontracting. It contained no requirement that a single company perform everything itself. So the contracting officer measured small businesses against a rule the solicitation did not impose, failed that rule against them, and did not apply the same failure to anyone else.
What GAO Told NIH To Do
Two things. Go do the market research again and then decide, consistent with the decision, whether to set the solicitation aside in full or in part. And pay LJR Solutions its costs of pursuing the protest, including reasonable attorneys' fees, with the claim to be filed and the payment handled within 60 days of the agency receiving the decision.
Note what the remedy is not. GAO did not order a set aside. It ordered a defensible answer to a question the agency had already answered twice in opposite directions.
Why This One Is Worth Keeping
Most sustained protests turn on evaluation errors buried in a source selection document, and the lesson is narrow. This one turns on something a small firm can actually check before deciding whether to spend money on a lawyer.
The pattern is: earlier market research says small businesses exist, later determination says they do not, nothing in between explains it. That pattern is visible from outside the agency. Prior research findings turn up in sources sought notices, in earlier procurements for the same work, and in the responses firms themselves filed.
The second pattern is just as checkable. If a determination rejects small businesses for lacking capacity to perform the whole scope, and the solicitation allows subcontracting, the two documents are arguing with each other. GAO read them together here and the agency lost on the reading.
The Numbers
One decision, B-424487. One protester. Three small businesses that the agency's own file said could do the work. Zero explanations for why they stopped counting. Sixty days to pay the legal bill.
Source: Government Accountability Office decision B-424487, LJR Solutions, LLC, decided August 14, 2026 and published August 24, 2026, together with the Recent Bid Protest Decisions listing at gao.gov. Everything above comes from that decision.