On federal work, protests are generally filed with the procuring agency first, then can go to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) under the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984 (CICA). CICA can suspend the award while GAO rules, and protests typically resolve within 100 calendar days. Only an "interested party" (a bidder with a direct economic stake in the outcome) can file.
State and local agencies each set their own protest procedures and deadlines. Those deadlines are often measured in days, not weeks, after the apparent low bidder is announced. In practice, the rules that matter are the ones written into that agency's bidding documents, not any federal default. Because the window to act is short, a clear picture of what the bid package required (scope, deadlines, bonding, mandatory forms, addenda) is more useful before bid day than after. Nonlinear produces that document-level read from the raw bid documents as part of qualifying an opportunity.
