Our Work • Ship repair.

Ship repair.

Audits & investigations • Bid protests • CDA claims • CPAR responses • Dispute avoidance • Prime/sub disputes • Suspension & debarment • Terminations

Federal ship repair contracts operate under a distinct legal and regulatory framework that sets them apart from virtually every other category of federal procurement. The differences matter at every stage — from how awards are made and protested to how performance disputes are identified, preserved, and resolved. This page focuses on bid protests in ship repair because protests expose many of the differences that make this market distinct: operational readiness, availability schedules, dry-dock capacity, shipyard capability, and the practical limits of corrective action.

The differences

Ship repair procurements operate on a different substrate than other federal work. Among the differences:

  • Scope is unknown at award and develops during the availability.
  • Ship’s-force interference and concurrent industrial work shape every schedule.
  • Availability windows are fixed by operational requirements, not contractor convenience.
  • DFARS Subpart 217.71 governs master agreements and job orders.
  • NAICS 336611 carries shipyard-specific size and capability standards.
  • Past performance is evaluated against shipyard-specific work, not general construction.
  • Specifications are frequently outdated relative to ship condition at the beginning of the availability.

What it means to a protest

These features change how a ship repair procurement gets evaluated, contested, and defended. Among the consequences for protest practice:

  • The automatic stay grounds the vessel — it is not a business inconvenience.
  • Operational readiness gives override arguments real weight on both sides.
  • Corrective action is constrained by the availability schedule.
  • Dry-dock, crane, and pier requirements can be challenged as unduly restrictive.
  • A successful NAICS challenge can restructure the entire competition.
  • Past performance weighting between naval, commercial, and general marine work is contestable.
  • Mobilization and homeporting cost advantages affect price-evaluation challenges.
  • Intervenors have arguments — operational readiness, cost of delay, infeasibility of recompete — unavailable elsewhere.

Ship repair / The differences in practice

The differences in practice.

Two GAO protests show what the differences mean. The first applied a brand-new industrial-base statute; the second turned a losing bid into a $61M award.

BAE Sys. San Diego Ship Repair — USS Russell (B-423271, 2025)

  • Protest denied. Our client retained the contract. The Navy issued a competitive solicitation for the next maintenance availability on USS Russell under NDAA FY 2024 § 126, which limits the use of government-operated dry docks if there is sufficient capacity at privately-operated dry docks to perform the contract. The protester alleged the Navy violated § 126 because it had space at its privately-operated dock. The GAO disagreed, finding that the Navy reasonably concluded the protester’s proposed dock was unavailable. The protester also argued that the Navy made mistakes evaluating manpower for both the protester and the proposed awardee. Again, the GAO disagreed, finding the protester’s allegations regarding the evaluation of its manpower were based on an incorrect interpretation of the solicitation and its arguments about the awardee’s manpower were not supported by the record. The GAO denied the protest and our client retained the contract.

Pacific Shipyards Int’l — USS Michael Murphy (B-420587, 2022)

  • $61M delivery order awarded to our client after a four-move protest sequence. The Navy initially awarded the USS Michael Murphy delivery order to Pacific Shipyards. We protested at GAO on past performance, resource capability and schedule, and best-value tradeoff grounds. The Navy took voluntary corrective action and GAO dismissed our protest as academic. But the agency’s corrective action was too narrow to fix the procurement — it did not allow revised price proposals when it should have. We filed an agency-level protest contending that the planned corrective action could not lawfully cure the defects without allowing offerors to submit new price proposals. The Navy agreed, revised the corrective action, and issued an amendment permitting revised price proposals. Pacific protested the revised corrective action at the GAO. We intervened there to defend the broadened remedy. GAO denied Pacific’s protest. Our client submitted revised proposals and was awarded the delivery order.

Results

Representative matters.

Recent and recurring ship repair work — protests above, performance below.

Award

  • BAE Sys. San Diego Ship Repair, Inc. — USS Russell, B-423271 (GAO 2025). Defended awardee-intervenor at GAO on a destroyer availability protest brought under NDAA FY 2024 § 126 dry-dock capacity limits and alleged manpower-evaluation errors. Protest denied; our client retained the contract.
  • Pacific Shipyards Int’l, LLC — USS Michael Murphy, B-420587 (GAO 2022). Represented our client through three sequential protest postures — GAO protester, agency-level protester, then intervenor — to reshape Navy corrective action on a ship-repair delivery order. $61M delivery order awarded to our client.

Performance

  • $1.665M COVID-impact recovery — Navy ship-repair contracts. On four consolidated CDA actions over pandemic-era ship-repair contracts at Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center, DOJ moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(1), arguing the Amended Complaint had not been “presented” to the contracting officer. We responded on two pillars: presentment is a claim-processing rule, not jurisdictional, under Arbaugh, Wilkins, and ECC International Constructors; and sameness in fact turned on operative facts and relief, not labels. The matter settled for $1,665,000 after full briefing.
  • Appeal of Oregon Iron Works, Inc. — Bremerton caisson, ASBCA Nos. 58356, 58399–58415 (2015). Across 18 consolidated ASBCA appeals on a Navy floating dry-dock caisson program, every issue mapped to one of two doctrines: defective specifications under Spearin, or constructive change under the North Star Alaska line. We recovered a $1,125,000 consent judgment, paid through the Judgment Fund under 31 U.S.C. § 1304.

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