Source: http://stanhinton.com/blog_current_dev.htm
Timestamp: 2017-11-22 18:09:38
Document Index: 154793003

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 16', '§ 121', '§ 121', '§ 5005', '§ 7102', '§ 7103', '§ 121', '§ 1', 'arts 801', '§ 207', '§ 124', '§ 121', '§ 121', '§ 125', '§ 121', '§ 121']

Blog: Current Developments in Government Contracting
Developments in Government Contracting--2017
November 22 In J.R. Mannes Government Services Corp., the CBCA dismissed an appeal seeking damages for what the contractor alleged was an improper convenience termination because the contractor failed to produce any evidence that the termination was in any manner objectionable (in fact, given the evidence summarized by the Board, the contractor seems fortunate to have escaped without a default).
November 21 The GAO sustained a protest by Fluor Federal Solutions, LLC because (after prior corrective actions) the agency evaluated proposals disparately under the staffing and resources factor, criticizing the protester's proposed approach as possibly involving a risk that it would not be able to recruit the incumbent workforce, while at the same time failing to meaningfully consider whether the awardee's proposed approach of repeatedly replacing its exempt employee workforce over the life of the contract posed a significant risk.
In Philip Emiabata d/b/a Philema Brothers, the Court of Federal Claims held that, apart from the portion of the suit challenging a default termination by the Postal Service, the plaintiff's various contract claims for damages must be dismissed because they were not first presented to the Contracting Officer for a decision.
In Atlas Sahil Construction Co., a decision involving the proper amount of recovery following a convenience termination, the ASBCA, inter alia, rejected the contractor's arguments that: (i) the Christian doctrine should be used to read the basic version of FAR 52.249.2 into the contract (because the contract included Alternate I to that clause and there was no regulation requiring the basic version to be used); (ii) CLIN pricing should be sued to determine the contractor's recovery (because costs, not prices, are the basis for T for C claims); and (iii) the jury verdict method should be utilized to determine quantum (because there was little or no evidence to support the contractor's contention that records of certain costs were unavailable to it).
The ASBCA sustained a default termination for failure to make progress on a construction contract because the contractor, MOQA-AQYOL JV, LTD.: (i) did not provide a credible analysis of government delays that would have excused its default; (ii) failed to overcome the release language in bilateral modifications that resolved three significant delays; and (iii) did not account for its own considerable delays, basically having assumed the risk of completing a complex project it was ill-equipped to undertake.
November 20 In XPO Logistics Worldwide Government Services, LLC, an unsuccessful post-award protest largely based on the facts that the protester's original scores were lowered during a reevaluation undertaken without additional discussions as part of corrective action after a prior protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that: (i) the protester waived its right to complain that the agency should have conducted discussions during corrective action (as well as its related argument that, absent re-opened discussions, the prior discussions had been unequal and misleading) because it was on notice no discussions were contemplated but did not protest until after award; (ii) the agency's evaluation of the magnitude of the protester's past contracts was unobjectionable because the agency used the values protester, itself, provided as part of its proposal; (iii) the agency had a rational basis for its rating of the relevance of one past contract; (iv) under the explicit terms of the solicitation, the agency was permitted to consider corporate experience in its best value tradeoff decision; and (v) several other protest grounds already had been litigated and thus were precluded by the doctrine of res judicata.
November 17 In Dyncorp International, LLC, a decision in which Judge Hodges repeatedly emphasizes the high burden of proof faced by protesters, the Court of Federal Claims: (i) rejected various challenges to the evaluation and (ii) held that, even though a former employee of the incumbent/protester had given the awardee's senior management sensitive, proprietary information belonging to the protester that could have benefited the eventual awardee in the bidding process, there was a rational basis for the Contracting Officer's conclusion, after investigation, that there was no evidence the awardee had used this information in the competition and, in fact, all the available evidence suggested the awardee had not done so.
November 16 In Hanks, Hanks & Assocs., LLC, the CBCA dismissed an appeal for lack of jurisdiction because the original submission to the Contracting Officer was not certified, which: (i) rendered the subsequent Contracting Officer's decision a nullity, and (ii) could not be cured by a certification submitted after the Contracting Officer's "decision."
The CBCA also dismissed an appeal by Pros Cleaners for lack of jurisdiction because the contractor had not requested a decision from the Contracting Officer until after filing the appeal.
The Treasury Department has amended its acquisition regulation to permit agency officials to obtain taxpayer return information as part of responsibility determinations to check whether prospective awardees are in compliance with tax laws or have unpaid tax liabilities.
November 14 In Sterling Design, Inc., the ASBCA held that any delays by the Contracting Officer in responding to the contractor's questions about the meanings of the CLIN requirements did not entitle the contractor to delay damages because those questions were addressed by the PWS, which the contractor admittedly did not read.
November 10 In an unusually detailed decision, the GAO sustained a protest by Global SuperTanker Services, LLC, after concluding that the agency's numerous rationales for a restrictive specification were unsupported in the record and, therefore, were unduly restrictive of competition.
November 8 The Court of Federal Claims dismissed a protest by the State of Texas as premature because (i) being included in the competitive range did not automatically entitle the protester to an award, and the protester was still being considered and, thus, still had a chance to win. Edgar: "Ripeness is all." King Lear, Act V, Scene II.
November 7 In Straughan Environmental, Inc., the Court of Federal Claims agreed with the protester that the awardee was ineligible for award because it did not have the required annual written approval from the SBA extending its mentor-protégé agreement. While that holding will not have a significant precedential impact (because the SBA has since changed its rules so that annual written approvals of such agreements are not required), the case still includes two interesting holdings on standing issues, specifically that: (i) even though the plaintiff did not originally file a size protest within the SBA's time limit, it nevertheless had standing to sue because the Contracting Officer had requested a size determination, which eventually had came back in favor of the awardee (and, therefore, adverse to the protester's interests); and (ii) if the OHA erred in dismissing the protester's appeal to the OHA for lack of standing (because it was ineligible for award) the protester still had standing to sue because there was only one firm determined to be eligible for award, and, if that firm were actually ineligible, then the protester was adversely affected.
In Family Entertainment Services, Inc., the ASBCA held that: (i) under the normal rules of contract interpretation, "day" meant "calendar day" rather than "work day" as advocated by the contractor; and (ii) the inspections conducted by the Government were authorized by the contact, and the deductions taken by Government for substandard work were reasonable.
November 6 Federal Acquisition Circular (FAC) 2005-96 has been published and includes the following item:
FAR Case 2017-015: A final rule amends the FAR to remove the clauses associated with the prior Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces regulations (FAR Case 2014–025). Subsequently, a minor correction to the rule was issued.
In Size Appeal of LSINC Corp., after a lengthy litigation up and down through the appeals process, the SBA's OHA held that the appellant had not presented sufficient evidence to overcome the presumption of economic dependence when the small business in question had consistently derived more than 70% of its income from a large business for a prior period of several years and continued to do so even after the date of the size determination. For some of the litigation history see Veterans Technology, LLC and MDW Assocs., LLC v. United States, No. 16-1489 (Aug. 2, 2017) (prior SBA OHA decision affirming Area Office finding that firms were affiliated through economic dependence and contractual relationships was arbitrary and capricious because OHA did not adequately investigate or provide analysis of circumstances of contractual relationships).
In Size Appeal of Native Energy & Technology, Inc., the OHA held that: (i) a firm that had acquired only the small surviving portion of a former firm was affiliated only with that portion and not the entire predecessor firm; (ii) there was no affiliation of firms through common management because the challenged individuals did not hold management positions in the alleged affiliate; (iii) there was no additional affiliation through identity of interest because the challenged spouses did not control any companies not already included in the SBA's calculations supporting its size determination.
November 3 The GAO sustained a protest by AT&T Corp. because: (i) the discussions were misleading and unequal where the agency only advised the awardee of a proposal concern that agency also had with protester's proposal; (ii) the agency failed to adequately document aspects of the technical evaluation; and (iii) the SSA's source selection decision relied in significant part on issues not documented in the record.
November 2 In Loomacres, Inc., the Court of Federal Claims denied the Government's motion to dismiss and held that a prospective bidder had standing to challenge the Government's decision to insource services, even though the plaintiff did not have a current contract to provide the insourced services. The court, all but inviting an appeal, recognized its decision might vary from two earlier court decisions on a similar issue and noted that the Federal Circuit had yet to rule on the precise question.
In Magwood Services, Inc., the CBCA dismissed an appeal for lack of jurisdiction because the contractor's letter requesting the Contracting Officer to reconsider a default termination (the termination being the subject of a separate appeal to the Board) could not reasonably be construed as a CDA claim for money damages due to outstanding invoices, which was the issue in the dismissed appeal.
October 31 In CliniComp International, Inc., an unsuccessful preaward protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that the plaintiff lacked standing to complain of a sole source award because, although it had provided basic services to the agency in the past, it did not have any experience providing the large dollar value of comprehensive services at the large number of facilities required by the proposed contract and, therefore, could not have competed for the award.
In Scott Goodsell, the court held, inter alia, that a letter from the agency/lessee informing the lessor that, effective on a stated date, the lessee would vacate the leased premises and terminate the lease and that the lessee would not pay rent beyond that date constituted a government claim under the CDA, upon which the lessor could maintain an action in the court.
In Ikhana, LLC, the ASBCA denied the surety's and Government's motions to dismiss the contractor's affirmative claims and its appeal of a default termination, holding that a contractor's right to a CDA appeal cannot be waived even if the contractor assigned its claims to a surety.
October 30 In FreeAlliance.com, LLC, an unsuccessful preaward protest, the Court of Federal Claims held there was a rational basis for the agency's decision to exclude the protester from further consideration for award because it failed to comply with a solicitation requirement to provide verification on letterhead that the offerors' accounting systems had been audited and determined adequate for determining costs applicable to the contract in accordance with FAR § 16.301–3(a)(1). This holding is one example of why I cautioned against taking the GAO's decision in the McCann-Erickson USA, Inc., protest as the norm. See October 4 entry below.
October 27 In Zebel, LLC, rejecting all the plaintiff's arguments to the contrary, the Court of Federal Claims held that, pursuant to the clear terms of an IFB auction for the purchase of real estate, the plaintiff forfeited its bid registration deposit when it failed to provide additional money for the purchase after the Government accepted its bid. Judge Sweeney dispensed with one of the plaintiff's arguments as follows:
Plaintiff also suggests that the IFB’s prohibition of the "cancellation" of bids does not preclude the "revocation" of bids. . . . This suggestion fails what is commonly known as the "duck test"—"if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck," S.I. Stud, Inc. v. United States, 24 F.3d 1394, 1396 (Fed. Cir. 1994) (Plager, J., dissenting)—because the action at issue is the same regardless of the label. In other words, to annul, cancel, invalidate, nix, pull back, quash, recall, renege, renounce, repeal, rescind, retract, revoke, void, or withdraw a bid (among others) is to arrive at the same result, and plaintiff’s attempt to split hairs over semantics is unavailing. See William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet act 2, sc. 2 ("What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet.").
October 26 In Brian X. Scott, although the Court of Federal Claims rejected the agency's argument that the FAR precludes federal employees from submitting unsolicited proposals, the court dismissed the plaintiff's claims because: (i) it found that the Government had reviewed the employee's unsolicited proposal under FAR 15.606 and had properly rejected it because it addressed a previously-published agency requirement; and (ii) the plaintiff's allegations that the agency improperly disclosed or misused data marked as restrictive in the unsolicited proposal were speculative and implausible.
The GAO sustained a protest by L3 Unidyne, Inc. because: (i) the agency failed to evaluate whether the awardee's requirement that certain newly-hired key employees sign binding arbitration agreements violated a statutory prohibition against such agreements; (ii) the agency unreasonably assigned a deficiency to the protester's proposal related to its Government Property Manager for working outside the commuting area identified by the solicitation and for the protester's failure to describe his duties fully because the GAO agreed that he was a non-key employee performing what the DCMA recognized as a centralized function at the firm's office for more than just the contract at issue and any informational deficiency in describing his duties fully did not rise to the level of a material deficiency; and (iii) the agency failed to evaluate the significant differences in the offerors' proposed staffing levels for various tasks.
In Matter of KC Consulting, LLC, the SBA's OHA upheld the agency's decision to terminate a firm from the 8(a) program because it failed to submit all required Annual Review update information despite having received two requests for it.
In Matter of Yard Masters, Inc., the OHA upheld the SBA's determination that a firm that had made some last minute changes to qualify as a WOSB for a particular procurement had not succeeded because, even though the SBA erroneously concluded there was not sufficient evidence of a stock transfer giving the wife 51% "ownership" in the firm, the woman's husband still held the highest officer position in the firm and managed its day-to-day operations, so that there was no "control" by the woman.
In NAICS Appeal of BLB Resources, Inc., the OHA held that, in a solicitation for Asset Management Services for HUD real estate owned ("REO") properties, the proper NAICS code was 531390 (Other Activities Related to Real Estate), with a corresponding $7.5 million size standard, rather than either 531210 (Offices of Real Estate Agents and Brokers), selected by the Contracting Officer, or 541611 (Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services) advocated by the Appellant.
October 24 In Omran Holding Group, Inc., the Court of Federal Claims denied the plaintiff's claim that the Government had used the wrong exchange rate to pay the contractor because that exchange rate was more favorable to the contractor than the correct rate and a third rate proposed by the contractor was not the correct rate, either.
In Rashed Elham Trading Co., the ASBCA upheld the termination for cause of a contract to transport cargo and fuel in support of contingency operations in Afghanistan because: (i) the contractor's letter to the Government stating that the contractor was "cancelling" contract as of a specific date amounted to anticipatory repudiation; (ii) the contractor's lack of response to the Government's cure notice constituted a failure to provide adequate assurances of performance; and (iii) the contractor failed to establish any factors excusing its failure to perform.
October 23 In Size Appeal of Stellar Innovations and Solutions, Inc., the SBA's OHA held that the Area Office had correctly used the date of initial priced offers to determine a challenged firm's size, rather than the date that final proposal revisions were submitted after corrective action in response to a prior GAO bid protest, as the appellant had advocated.
October 19 In MW Builders, Inc. f/n/a MW Builders of Texas, Inc., the Court of Federal Claims held, inter alia, that: (i) the construction contract at issue included a latent ambiguity concerning which of the contracting parties was required to sign a line extension agreement with a utility; (ii) extrinsic evidence demonstrated that the parties did not intend for the contractor to sign it but instead intended to follow industry practice, which is to have the end user (in this case the Government) sign it; (iii) the Government's prolonged efforts to convince the contractor to sign the agreement and the Government's delays in signing the agreement, itself, breached its duty of good faith and fair dealing to the contractor and unreasonably and compensably delayed the construction project; (iv) a subcontractor had waived its pass-through claims by signing general release waivers each time it received a progress payment from the prime; and (v) there was insufficient evidence to conclude that by using certain estimated rather than actual costs in its delay claim (which ultimately resulted in the claim amount being overstated) the contractor had acted with the specific intent to defraud the Government in contravention of the anti-fraud provision of CDA or the Special Plea in Fraud Statute (28 U.S.C. 2514) or the False Claims Act.
In Agility Defense & Government Services, Inc., on remand from the CAFC, which had reversed the Court of Federal Claims' prior decision in favor of the Government, the court determined that the contractor had proved, and was entitled to recover, its actual costs resulting from extra work attributable to the Government's negligent estimate of the work under a requirements contract.
October 18 The basic holding by the Court of Federal Claims in Sonoran Technology and Professional Services, LLC, is that all of the protester's challenges to the agency's corrective action (as a result of which the agency canceled the contract award to the protester and awarded the contract to a competitor) are, for various reasons, untimely. In trying to explain the court's reasoning, however, I feel like I've followed Alice through the looking glass. I hope it's just because I'm still groggy early this morning and not because I'm getting senile.
After the agency originally determined (internally) that a competitor did not possess the facility security clearance (FCL) required by the solicitation and, therefore, awarded the original contract to Sonoran, the competitor filed a protest in the Court of Federal Claims and, almost immediately (and before any briefings or opinions were filed), the agency notified the court that it intended to take corrective action by referring the matter of the competitor's responsibility to the SBA for a CoC, so the court dismissed the protest. Then, the SBA informed the agency that it could not process a CoC in these circumstances because the contract already had been awarded to Sonoran, in response to which the competitor filed another protest at the court against the SBA's position, as a result of which the SBA promptly changed its mind and, after the SBA informed the court that it would process the CoC (the competitor having obtained an FCL by this time) and the agency informed the court that it intended to cancel the award to Sonoran and award to the competitor once the CoC was issued, the court dismissed the second protest, again without issuing any decision. Sonoran had not intervened in either of these (very brief) protests.
Subsequently, the agency did cancel Sonoran's award and awarded to its competitor, after which Sonoran filed its current protest. In its first two grounds, Sonoran alleged that the award to the competitor was improper because the competitor failed to possess the required security clearance in a timely manner. The court holds these two grounds are untimely under the Federal Circuit's decision in Blue & Gold Fleet because the solicitation was patently ambiguous as to when an FCL was required and Sonoran should have protested the ambiguity before bids were originally due. Of course, Sonoran had an FCL in a timely manner regardless how the solicitation was interpreted and was not aware before bids were due that there would be an FCL issue with an awardee, so accusing Sonoran of laying behind the log and waiting until it found out whether it had won the award before protesting seems like a bit of a stretch to me. In fact, one wonders why the competitor (who did not have an FCL at the time of the original solicitation or when it submitted its offer or when the original award to Sonoran was made) was allowed to skate by without being hooked by the Blue & Gold Fleet rule?
Sonoran's third challenge was that (because of the Small Business Act's requirement that companies on SDVOSB set asides must perform 50% of the work) the agency misevaluated the competitor's past performance in the original solicitation. The court finds this to be an untimely protest of the terms of the solicitation, too (!) citing Blue & Gold Fleet for the blanket proposition that "allegations that an agency’s evaluation of a proposal runs afoul of applicable statutes and regulations are challenges to the terms of the solicitation that must be brought before the close of the bidding process." Huh? Let's try to imagine what a "timely" protest by Sonoran would have looked like under the court's reasoning. Sometime before bids were submitted, Sonoran would have had to allege that, because it knew who would submit bids and knew that one of them was only recently formed, it was certain the agency would evaluate that competitor's past performance improperly because the agency would not properly take into account the SBA's 50% rule when it got around to evaluating proposals. How long do you figure that protest would have lasted before it would have been dismissed as premature and speculative (and just plain lunatic, to boot)? Milliseconds would be my guess.
The court also finds Sonoran's final two protest grounds (that the agency's decision to rely on the CoC and its award to the competitor both lacked a rational basis) untimely on the basis that Sonoran should have raised them before award. The court faults Sonoran for not having intervened in the prior protests and for not having paid for obtaining copies of the filings in the protests from the court's PACER system because, if Sonoran had done either of those things, it would have been able to figure out that (i) its contract was in jeopardy and (ii) it would be wise to file a proactive protest against what the agency might be thinking about doing. I am, to put it mildly, left unenthused by this reasoning.
Maybe, reading between all the lines of this decision there is a sound basis for the result, but one needs sharper eyes than my old tired ones to find it. What do you think?
In Assessment and Training Solutions Consulting Corp., the ASBCA held that the Government was responsible for damage to a leased vessel, even absent evidence clearly showing that the damages were the result of the Government's negligence, because the Board applied the common law of bailment, which provides that when the Government rents property from a contractor, a bailment for the mutual benefit of the parties is created, which imposes upon the Government the duty to protect the property by exercising ordinary care and establishes that, when the Government receives the property in good condition and returns it in a damaged condition, there is a presumption that the cause of the damage to the property was the Government's failure to exercise ordinary care or its negligence.
October 17 In T Square Logistics Services Corp., a successful preaward protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that, after (i) the protester contacted both the Contract Specialist and the Contracting Officer by email (prior to the due date) to inform them of a weather-related delay of FedEx's delivery of a hard copy of the proposal (as required by the solicitation), enclosing an email copy of the proposal, and (ii) the Contract Specialist replied by assuring the contractor that the late delivery of the hard copy would not be a problem because there was evidence the contractor had shipped it prior to the due date (in reliance upon which assurances the contractor then advised its local rep it was not necessary to print out and hand-deliver a hard copy of the proposal), the Government improperly rejected the FedEx hard copy as late under 52.212-1 without considering whether the late submission should be waived as a minor informality.
October 13 In Synergy Solutions, Inc., an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims rejected all of the disappointed incumbent bidder's objections to numerous aspects of the evaluation, including the evaluations of: (i) corporate experience; (ii) past performance; (iii) cost realism; (iv) direct labor rates; (v) indirect rates; (vi) staffing plans; and (vii) the offerors' demonstrated ability to comply with the technical requirements. In addition, the court held that: (i) the protester had waived its objections to agency's conduct of discussions because those objections were not raised before the implementation of corrective action in response to a prior protest of the procurement during which those discussions had been held; and (ii) the protester had not established it was prejudiced by any errors that might have occurred.
October 11 In L-3 Communications Integrated Systems, L.P., the ASBCA denied the contractor's motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction because the Board found that the Contracting Officer's written decisions asserting the Government's claims against the contractor demanded a sum certain and provided the contractor with sufficient notice of the basis and the amount of the claims.
The SBA has updated the NAICS codes authorized for use in the Women-Owned Small Business Federal Contract Program (WOSB Program) in order to reflect the OMB's NAICS revision for 2017, identified as NAICS 2017, which created 21 new industries by reclassifying, combining, or splitting 29 NAICS 2012 industry codes. These changes would impact eight of the 2012 NAICS codes designated for use under the WOSB Program.
October 5 The ASBCA dismissed an appeal for lack of jurisdiction in NileCo General Contracting LLC, because the contractor included only a typewritten signature block on the original claim, but no actual signature (not even a digital or electronic one).
In Elham Ahmadi Construction Co., the ASBCA held it lacked jurisdiction over an untimely appeal submitted by a foreign firm appearing pro se more than six years after the default termination on which it was based.
October 4 In Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions, LLC, the Court of Federal Claims held that information in the protester/incumbent's CPARS that was discussed in the court's decision on the protest was not protected from release under the protective order covering the protest and would not be redacted from the court's published decision.
In what seems to me to be a peculiar decision, the GAO sustained a protest by McCann-Erickson USA, Inc., because the agency had eliminated the protester's proposal from the competition for failure to comply with certain proposal preparation instructions without evaluating the proposal fully in accordance with the solicitation's stated evaluation criteria. According to the GAO, the following standard solicitation provision (which was included in the solicitation) was not a sufficient basis for disqualification for failure to follow the proposal preparation instructions in Section L: "Award will be made to a single Offeror who is deemed responsible, whose proposal conforms to the solicitation requirements (to include all stated terms, conditions, representations, certifications, and all other information required by Section L and Section M of this solicitation)." I hope that this decision does not tempt bidders to believe they are safe in ignoring the proposal preparation instructions.
October 3 In Tender Years Learning Corp., an unsuccessful protest of the Government's alleged breach of the implied-in-fact contract to consider the protester's bid fairly, the Court of Federal Claims held, inter alia, that: (i) the protester had failed to timely submit evidence to the agency that the protester had the required board of directors; and (ii) the Government had a rational basis for its conclusion that a number of the protester's current staff lacked the required qualifications.
In Sylvan B. Orr, the CBCA held that a general release executed by the contractor precluded its subsequent claim for disposal of non-hazardous solid waste and, even if the claim had not been covered by the release, the contractor's actions in attempting to find a location for disposal of the waste were unreasonable and failed to mitigate any damages it might otherwise have suffered.
September 29 In Avalon Plaza LLC, a decision involving the rules of contract interpretation, the CBCA held that a lease agreement, interpreted as a whole, did not entitle the lessor/appellant to extra compensation for air conditioning a data communications room to maintain a specific temperature range.
September 28 The GAO sustained a protest by CR/ZWS LLC because the awardee's proposal failed to comply with a material requirement of the solicitation.
In compliance with Sections 1832 and 1833 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, the SBA is proposing to amend the OHA's rules of practice to implement procedures for protests of eligibility for inclusion in the VA Center for Verification and Evaluation (CVE) database, and procedures for appeals of denials and cancellations of inclusion in the CVE database. Comments are due by October 30.
In James M. Fogg Farms, Inc., et al., the Court of Federal Claims held that a contract which incorporated certain federal regulations, but not the provision in the underlying statute upon which plaintiff was relying in its breach claim, did not create a contractual obligation that could be breached.
September 27 In American Boys Construction Co., the ASBCA held that, where a stop work order was issued nine days after award (and was followed by a termination for convenience): (i) the contractor's decision to purchase materials prior to both a notice to proceed and material approval was unreasonable and, therefore, noncompensable; and (ii) the contractor's claim for standby labor costs had to be denied because the contractor failed to present any evidence to support it.
In Yates-Desbuild Joint Venture, the CBCA used critical path analysis to apportion responsibility for lengthy delays between the Government and the contractor under a contract for the construction of a Department of State compound in Mumbai, India.
Effective October 1, the SBA is adopting, without change, its proposed revisions to small business size standards by incorporating the OMB's NAICS revision for 2017 into the SBA's table of small business size standards and, thereby, identifying 21 new industries (by reclassifying, combining, or splitting 29 existing industries under changes made to NAICS in 2012). SBA’s size standards for these 21 new industries have resulted in an increase to size standards for six NAICS 2012 industries and part of one industry, a decrease to size standards for two, a change in the size standards measure from average annual receipts to number of employees for one industry, and no change in size standards for twenty industries and part of one industry.
September 25 In Size Appeal of Lost Creek Holdings, LLC d/b/a All-STAR Health Solutions, the SBA's OHA held that the ostensible subcontractor rule at 13 C.F.R. § 121.103(h)(4), which requires that a contractor and its ostensible subcontractor be treated as affiliates for size determination purposes, has not been overridden by 13 C.F.R. § 121.103(h)(3)(i), which provides that a joint venture of two small businesses may submit an offer for any federal procurement. The OHA concluded that the Area Office should have investigated the protester's allegation that two small businesses ran afoul of the ostensible subcontractor rule. In its decision, the OHA quotes (with approval) language that seems to me to harmonize the two provisions: "The purpose of the [ostensible subcontractor rule] is to 'prevent other than small firms from forming relationships with small firms to evade SBA's size requirements.'" [emphasis added; citation omitted] If the purpose of the ostensible rule is to prevent a large business from forming a relationship with a small business to evade the SBA's size restrictions, then isn't the ostensible subcontractor rule perfectly consistent with the rule that two small businesses may form a joint venture for any federal procurement without any problems with affiliation?
As an example of how the ostensible subcontractor rule is supposed to work, the OHA held in Size Appeal of Automation Precision Technology, LLC, that the Area Office had correctly found affiliation under the rule where the small business prime proposed to hire the large business incumbent's workforce en masse and almost entirely rely on that large business (as a subcontractor) for managing the contract.
September 22 Bluewater Management Group, LLC, won its GAO protest because the task order issued to the awardee pursuant to an FSS RFQ was for services not included in that firm's underlying FSS contract.
In Industrial Maintenance Services, Inc., a decision involving contract interpretation issues and limited to the issue of entitlement, the CBCA held, inter alia, that the contractor was entitled to certain costs associated with the effect of a change on unchanged work because the bilateral modification implementing the change did not include an agreement as to the time and cost impacts of the added and altered work and, therefore, did not preclude recovery for those impacts, as the Government had contended.
September 21 In Central Texas Express Metalwork LLC d/b/a Express Contracting, in dismissing the contractor's appeal, the ASBCA held that the contractor could not avoid the final release of claims that it and the Government had signed (thereby making the release a binding contract) by refusing to accept the final payment called for in the release.
In Arab Shah Construction Co., the ASBCA denied a claim because it: (i) was precluded by a contract modification, (ii) was not submitted until after final payment had been made, and (iii) was "supported" by two pieces of "evidence" the Board determined were likely forgeries by the contractor.
In Access Personnel Services, Inc., a decision limited to entitlement, the ASBCA rejected both the Government's and the contractor's interpretations of FAR 52.232-7 (Payments Under Time-and-Materials and Labor-Hour Contracts) and held that the "Payments" clause required that the contractor be reimbursed for its "costs of subcontracts" rather than for (i) the hourly rates billed to it by its subcontractor (as the Government contended) or (ii) the hours billed to it by its subcontractor at the same hourly rates stated in the contract's Schedule for the prime's work (as the contractor contended).
In Lulus Ostrich Ranch, the ASBCA held: (i) it lacked jurisdiction over a bid-protest type claim that the Government allegedly violated procurement rules by awarding contracts to other contractors; however, (ii) it had jurisdiction over a claim that the Government had extended appellant's contract only as a pretext to permit its subcontractor time to become eligible to perform the contract in appellant's stead.
September 20 In Vanquish Worldwide, LLC, the Court of Federal Claims held that the contractor's messages to the Government concerning a disputed performance evaluation did not constitute a CDA claim because they did not request a decision from the Contracting Officer and contemplated further dialogue.
September 19 In Triumph Donnelly Studios LLC, the PSBCA held it lacked jurisdiction to hear a claim for damages for the Postal Service's failure to deliver an item of Priority Mail.
September 18 The Arcanum Group, Inc., won its GAO protest because the record did not contain an adequate explanation of the SSA's decision to override the SSEB's conclusion that the awardee had not submitted sufficiently similar projects for the past performance evaluation.
In The Hanover Insurance Co., et al., the Court of Federal Claims permitted the Government to amend its answers to include affirmative defenses and counterclaims in fraud as a result of the plaintiffs' amendments to their complaints, well into discovery, to remove certain claims. My favorite part of the decision, however, is the heading for the section of the decision in which the court denied another motion by the Government: "Defendant's Mootness Argument is Moot." . . . Hoist on its own petard. ;)
September 15 In Iron Bow Technologies, LLC, an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that, in the context of clear solicitation requirements to provide details justifying an offeror's proposed approach, the agency's discussions with the protester were adequate and had not been misleading, and the protester was not reasonable in assuming it could simply add hours to its proposal to respond to a weakness identified by the agency during discussions without explaining how those added hours related to its technical approach.
In CH2M♦WG Idaho, LLC, the CBCA held, inter alia, that neither the "Changes" clause nor the "Incentive Fee" clause in a cost reimbursable contract gave the Government the right to unilaterally change the contract to adjust payments between target and non-target work as a means of correcting a G&A allocation issue.
September 14 In Baldi Bros., Inc., the Court of Federal Claims held that, under FAR 14.407-4(b)(2)(ii), the contractor was not entitled to recover on its claim to modify a contract to correct an alleged mistake in bid because the corrected bid would exceed the next lowest acceptable bid that the Government had received in the competition.
September 12 In E.C. London & Assocs., the ASBCA: (i) denied the contractor's claim for cleaning windows added by changes because (a) the evidence presented by the Government established the added windows were offset by others taken offline, such that the contractor was paid for the square footage indicated in the task orders at issue, and (b) the record contained no explanation of the methodology used to come up with contrary square footage measurements once made by one government employee (and no way to replicate those figures); and (ii) held it lacked jurisdiction over the contractor's request for Prompt Payment Act interest on other portions of its claim that were allowed because the contractor had not first submitted a Prompt Payment Act interest claim to the Contracting Officer.
Often in government contract disputes, we are faced with the question whether a government official had the authority to bind the Government, but in Horton Construction Co., the ASBCA denied the Government's motion for summary judgment based on a final payment and release document allegedly signed by the contractor because the contractor raised a genuine issue of material fact by maintaining that the individual that signed the documents on behalf of the contractor lacked the authority to do so.
In ABS Development Corp., the ASBCA granted the Government's requests to amend its answers to include contentions that (i) the contract was obtained, and tainted, by fraud, and hence was void ab initio, and (ii) the Government was not responsible for the sovereign acts of a foreign government.
September 11 In Stromness MPO, LLC, which involved numerous issues of contract interpretation, the Court of Federal Claims found that both parties had made mistakes in the administration of leases between them and held, inter alia, that although the Postal Service had not breached the lease agreements by constructing a demising wall that prevented access to certain areas in the leased premises by those in other areas of the premises not leased to the Postal Service, the Postal Service was liable for having constructing the wall in the wrong location and for certain holdover costs.
September 8 In Cook Mail Carriers, Inc., the PSBCA reduced the sum claimed in an EAJA application by a significant amount in order to reflect the contractor's limited success on its original claims.
September 6 In Avant Assessment, LLC, which involved consolidated appeals under three contracts, the ASBCA: (i) overturned the default termination of one contract because the Government waived the original delivery dates by adopting a new schedule and failed to prove that the contractor had not met the new schedule (this part of the decision makes more sense if one also reads the Board's earlier decision in the related case of ASBCA No. 58866); and (ii) held that the contractor had failed to provide specific proof of its claims that the Government had improperly rejected test items.
In Elizabeth Construction Co., the ASBCA dismissed an appeal for lack of jurisdiction because the appellant did not allege the existence of any contract between it and United States.
September 5 In Size Appeal of MEGEN-AWA2, LLC, the SBA's OHA held that the Area Office had correctly found two firms to be affiliated under the identity-of-interest rules because their owners were brothers with no clear fracture between them since both firms were in the same line of business and had participated in joint ventures together.
In Size Appeal of Sea Box, Inc., the OHA upheld the Area Office's decision to treat a firm's letter as a protest and then to dismiss it for lack of standing because the protester already had been eliminated from the competition for a procurement-related reason.
September 4 In BES Design/Build, LLC, the CBCA denied the contractor's request for the immediate release of the funds found due to it in the Contracting Officer's decision because, once appealed by the contractor, that decision is not binding, and the Board reviews the dispute de novo.
In MWH Global, Inc., the Court of Federal Claims denied the Government's motion to take more depositions than provided for in RCFC 30(a)(2)(A)(1) because the Government's motion offered no explanation as to why additional depositions should be allowed under the standards in the discovery rule.
In PDS Consultants, Inc., the court granted the defendant/intervenor's motion to stay the court's prior judgment (that the VA must perform a Rule of Two analysis before purchasing items off the AbilityOne Procurement List) pending the appeal of the court's judgment to the CAFC.
September 1 The VA has withdrawn a proposed rule amending the regulations governing the VA’s Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) Verification Program.
Magnus Pacific Corp. prevailed on the majority of its claims for extra work on a fixed-price contract for levee restoration work, in large part because the Government's design for the project contained flaws, and the solicitation documents misled bidders, for example, as to the amount of fill that would have to be imported for use on the project.
August 31 In Geiler/Schrudde & Zimmerman, A Joint Venture, an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that: (i) the death of the SDVOSB protester's owner after the award of a contested contract did not deprive the protester of standing to pursue its original Complaint against the award because standing is determined as of the time of award; (ii) however, the court lacked protest jurisdiction over the protester's Supplemental Complaint challenging the post-award revocation of its SDVOSB status as a result of its owner's death; (iii) as to the original Complaint, the protester's challenges to the agency's determinations that the awardee's past projects met the solicitation's experience and past performance requirements were unavailing because such determinations are generally within the agency's discretion; and (iv) the agency's price evaluation techniques complied with the FAR and with the solicitation's requirements, and the agency was not required to credit the protester for an alternate bid suggesting a reduction in price might be possible if certain contingencies occurred.
August 30 In Veterans Contracting Group, Inc., a successful preaward protest, the Court of Federal Claims issued a preliminary injunction against the Government because the court (i) disagreed with an SBA Area Office's finding that a provision in the protester's shareholder agreement ("upon shareholder death, incompetency, or insolvency, all of his or her shares must be purchased by the corporation at the Certificate of Value price") ran afoul of the requirement that an SDVOSB must be "unconditionally" 51%-owned by a service disabled veteran; and, therefore, (ii) concluded that the SBA's finding should not have been used by the VA as the basis to remove the firm from the VA's VIP database of qualified SDVOSBs.
August 29 David Jones CPA PC won its GAO protest because, in a solicitation to establish multiple BPAs, the agency improperly excluded the protester's proposal from further consideration solely on the basis of a single line-item price the agency considered too high, without considering whether that would result in the agency paying an unreasonably high price for the performance of a typical order under a BPA.
In Thunderstruck Signs, the ASBCA denied an appeal from a termination for cause because, after the Government repeatedly had extended the delivery date, the final due date established by the Government (which the contractor failed to meet through no fault of the Government) was reasonable in the circumstances.
August 28 In Asheville Jet Charter and Management, Inc., the CBCA held that the resignations of three of the contractor's key, at-will employees did not constitute a strike and were not caused by the Government and, therefore, did not excuse the contractor's failure to perform.
August 25 The following has gradually developed into one of my pet peeves. In early 2016, the GAO started announcing its plans to implement its new electronic filing system for bid protests. At first, the GAO predicted the new system would become effective sometime in the summer of 2016. However, when that did not happen, in the late summer of 2016, the GAO's website replaced that prediction with the following uninformative sentence: "We have not yet established a firm start date." That sentence has been all there is for a year now, apart from the additional invitation on their website to "[p]lease check back for updates." I don't care when they start the new system (or whether they ever start it), but surely they can give us some basic update so that people don't have to be constantly checking back to see when (or if) the new system will start. Like: "The system will not begin at least until [x] date." Just my two cents.
In The Hanover Insurance Co., the Court of Federal Claims held that a surety's letter to the Government adequately notified it of the contractor's default of a bond agreement, triggering the surety's right of equitable subrogation.
In Q Integrated Companies, LLC, the court determined the quantum of proposal preparation costs and EAJA attorneys' fees and costs due a protester whose protest resulted in "substantial relief" (even though it did not prevail on some of its alternative grounds of protest), including the appropriate COLA adjustment to apply to determine the recoverable hourly attorney rates, and related costs such as filing fees, electronic legal research, FedEx shipping, courier charges, travel expenses, and conference calls.
August 24 Global Language Center won its GAO protest because the procuring agency: (i) allowed only the eventual awardee to submit material changes to its proposal after final proposal revisions were due; (ii) failed to adequately document its past performance evaluation; and (iii) credited the awardee for past performance without considering its relevance and failed to credit the protester for its clearly relevant past performance as the incumbent.
August 23 In Harkcon, Inc., an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held, inter alia, that: (i) the facts that (a) the awardee's proposed price was close to the incumbent's and (ii) a Government employee who had only a limited relationship with the solicitation was subsequently hired by the awardee, were not sufficient to create even the appearance of impropriety; (ii) the agency's assignment of a deficiency to the protester's staffing was reasonable because several proposed key employees did not meet the solicitation's mandatory educational requirements; and (iii) that staffing subfactor deficiency was sufficiently significant that it justified the agency's decision to "roll-up" the deficiency into the overall factor evaluation.
In a decision that strikes me as a bit officious, the CBCA held in CTA I, LLC that, under the CDA, if a Contracting Officer, within 60 days of receiving a claim, provides the contractor with a definite date within which a decision will be issued and then misses that date, the contractor's only options are to wait for the decision or to treat the missed date as a deemed denial and appeal--according to the Board, the contractor cannot, at that point, petition the Board to direct the Contracting Officer to issue a decision by a specific date.
In Eagle Mechanical, Inc., the CBCA held it lacked jurisdiction over a direct appeal by a subcontractor that was not sponsored by the prime.
August 22 In Tristana R. Harvey Career Planning & Consulting Series LLC, the ASBCA held that a convenience termination was not in bad faith and did not violate the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing.
August 18 In Coast to Coast Computer Products, the CBCA denied various claims related to the agency's blanket purchase agreement (BPA) mainly because the claims were based upon a misapprehension of the nature of a BPA, i.e., upon various alleged obligations on the part of the Government that a BPA simply does not establish.
In KEO & Assocs., the CBCA held it lacked jurisdiction over an appeal--not even to entertain the contractor's request to dismiss the appeal without prejudice (after the Contracting Officer withdrew a decision on an REA)--because there was no underlying certified claim requesting a Contracting Officer's decision.
August 17 In Treadwell Corp., an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held, inter alia, that: (i) the protester had not established it would be irreparably harmed absent a stay of performance, in part because it waited until eight months after contract award to file suit; (ii) there was no merit to the protester's allegation that the awardee's proposal should have been rejected as nonresponsive simply because the awardee's proposal did not show the awardee could meet the strictest delivery schedule the Government might have imposed on the contractor, especially where the record showed the awardee committed to the solicitation's delivery schedule; (iii) the fact that the awardee did not propose as aggressive a delivery schedule as the protester had did not mean that the Government treated offerors unequally in the evaluation; and (iv) a post-award modification of the delivery schedule was not a cardinal change.
YWCA of Greater Los Angeles won its GAO protest because the agency engaged in unequal discussions by permitting the awardee to amend its proposal, after final proposal revisions had been submitted, in order to substitute a new key person, without reopening discussions with other offerors.
August 16 The Bureau of Industry and Security has issued a final rule revising the CCL, as well as corresponding parts of the EAR, to implement changes made to the Wassenaar Arrangement List of Dual-Use Goods and Technologies (WA List) maintained and agreed to by governments participating in the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies (Wassenaar Arrangement, or WA) at the December 2016 WA Plenary meeting. This rule harmonizes the CCL with the agreements reached at the 2016 Plenary meeting by revising Export Control Classification Numbers (ECCNs) controlled for national security reasons in each category of the CCL, as well as making other associated changes to the EAR.
In NAICS Appeal of Caduceus Healthcare, Inc., the SBA's OHA held that, in a solicitation for expert market research, data analytics, recruitment, and advertising services, the appropriate NAICS code was 561311 (Employment Placement Agencies) with a corresponding $27.5 million average annual receipts size standard, rather than the Contracting Officer's original designation of code 541612 (Human Resources Consulting Services) with a corresponding $15 million annual receipts size standard.
In NAICS Appeal of American West Laundry, Inc., the OHA held that, in a solicitation for bulk laundry services, the proper NAICS code should have been 812320 (Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated)), with a corresponding size standard of $5.5 million average annual receipts, rather than 812331 (Linen Supply) with an associated size standard of $32.5 million average annual receipts (selected by the Contracting Officer) or 812332 (Industrial Launderers) recommended by the SBA.
In DNC Parks & Resorts at Yosemite, Inc., which involved contract interpretation, the Court of Federal Claims held that the contract at issue unambiguously precluded the Government from asserting prior material breach as an affirmative defense to the plaintiff's claims for certain termination costs.
Effective October 16 (unless adverse comments are received by September 15), NASA is issuing a direct final rule to amend the NASA FAR Supplement (NFS): (i) to remove an outdated reference to the NASA Acquisition Information System (NAIS) electronic posting system; and (ii) to revise titles to agency directives.
August 15 In Engineering Solutions & Products, LLC, the ASBCA denied a claim based on an alleged implied-in-fact agreement and held that the contractor had made a business decision to risk leasing warehouse facilities for an extended period in the hopes it could sublease to the Government for seven years, but without any binding commitment from the Contracting Officer (or anyone else with actual or implied authority) to stay that long, and, therefore, could not recover (even under a quantum meruit theory) when the Government vacated the premises after only five years.
However, in Honeywell International, Inc., the ASBCA determined the amount the contractor could recover under quantum valebant or quantum meruit remedies for the fair market value of the goods and services it had delivered to the Government pursuant to an invalid contract.
In Hellenic Air Force, the ASBCA dismissed an appeal because the Board lacks jurisdiction to provide the requested relief, i.e., ordering the Government to re-open or reinstate an FMS agreement (due to allegedly defective sale items), which the Board interpreted as a request for injunctive relief.
In Size Appeal of Synergy Solutions, Inc., the SBA's OHA denied an appeal and decided the Area Office had correctly identified the contract's primary and vital requirements and had found that a firm was not unduly reliant on subcontractors in violation of the ostensible subcontractor rule.
In Size Appeal of Potomac River Group, LLC, the OHA held that, in determining affiliation and size, the Area Office correctly disregarded a revised operating agreement executed after the date of a firm's self-certification as a small business.
In Size Appeal of University Strategy Group, Inc., the OHA held that the Area Office correctly dismissed a size protest because the Contracting Officer had not required firms to recertify as small businesses for a task order under a Multiple Award Contract.
August 12 In Remote Diagnostic Technologies, LLC, the Court of Federal Claims granted the Government's motion to dismiss a protest on the basis that the plaintiff lacked standing because it did not meet the solicitation's minimum requirements, which it had not shown were unduly restrictive. The protester had wanted that issue to await a decision on the merits and, therefore, had not argued it extensively in response to the Government's motion, so the court's decision is partly the result of the protester's litigation strategy.
August 10 In Sonoran Technology and Professional Services, LLC, the Court of Federal Claims denied the protester's motion to amend its Complaint to add two counts against the SBA for allegedly issuing a CoC to a nonresponsible bidder and reopening a CoC referral contrary to established SBA practices because (i) the court lacks jurisdiction to review the issuance of a CoC and (ii) the protester waited too long to file its motion to amend.
In Automated Collection Services, Inc. and Alltran Education, Inc., the court denied protests of the scope of the agency's corrective action in response to prior protests because of the agency's wide discretion in determining such matters.
August 9 In Harkcon, Inc., the Court of Federal Claims denied the protester's motion to supplement the administrative record because, inter alia: (i) one requested document was already publically available and others did not exist or were identical to documents already included in the record; and (ii) the deposition of a government employee would not aid in the court's analysis because there was already a written record of the rationale for his decision.
In Safeco Insurance Co. of America, the ASBCA dismissed an appeal for lack of jurisdiction because: (i) the Board lacks CDA jurisdiction over equitable subrogation claims; and (ii) the appellant failed to present non-frivolous allegations of the required elements for an implied-in-fact contract.
In Benjamin Medina, the ASBCA held: (i) it lacked jurisdiction over the lessor's quantum meruit claim because it had not been previously presented to the Contracting Officer; (ii) the lease's restoration clause (a) clearly stated the Government would not be responsible for the costs of repainting if it occupied the premises for more than three years and (b) was not in conflict with the indemnification clause; and (iii) other property conditions at lease termination were due to non-compensable normal wear and tear.
In Optimum Services, Inc., which involved the contractor's application for reimbursement under the EAJA, the ASBCA held, inter alia, it lacked authority: (i) to award attorneys' fees in excess of the statutory cap of $125 per hour absent an agency regulation authorizing such enhancement or (ii) to award expert fees at hourly rates higher than the Government paid its own experts.
August 4 The GAO sustained a protest by SURVICE Engineering Co., LLC because: (i) the agency failed to evaluate the awardee's professional compensation plan in accordance with FAR 52.222-46(b), i.e., the agency did not reasonably compare the awardee's salaries to incumbent salaries, a necessary step to determine whether the proposed salaries were lower than incumbent salaries; and (ii) the agency evaluated proposals on unequal bases, utilizing unstated evaluation criteria.
In Godwin Anagu, the CBCA denied a misdescription claim regarding a vehicle purchased at auction because the warranty of description when a vehicle is sold "as is" is satisfied when the advertisement provides an accurate year, make, model, and VIN number.
In Mail Transportation, Inc., et al., a group of unsuccessful protests by holders of Postal Service delivery contracts, the Court of Federal Claims held that the Postal Service performed an adequate analysis, as required by 39 U.S.C. § 5005(c), in selecting routes to be converted from Highway Contract Route (HCR) contracts to Postal Vehicle Service (PVS) routes.
August 3 In an interesting decision highly critical of what the Court of Federal Claims viewed as the SBA's nebulous and ambiguous regulations concerning affiliation, the court held in Veterans Technology, LLC and MDW Assocs., LLC, inter alia, that a prior decision by the SBA's OHA, which had affirmed the Area Office's finding that firms were affiliated through economic dependence and contractual relationships, was arbitrary and capricious because neither the OHA nor the Area Office had adequately investigated or provided an analysis of the circumstances that led to the contractual relationships between the firms.
In Lee's Ford Dock, Inc., the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that: (i) a lease allowing a contractor to operate a marina on the leased premises was a contract "for the disposal of personal property" under 41 U.S.C. § 7102(a)(4) and, therefore, was covered by the CDA; (ii) there was no CDA jurisdiction over the contractor's reformation claim, which was based upon allegations of the Government's misrepresentation, because it was different from the claim presented to the Contracting Officer, which was based on mutual mistake; and (iii) the Board's rejection of the contractor's breach claim (which was based on changes in the water levels of the lake surrounding the marina) was appropriate because the contract clearly gave the Government the right to manipulate the lake's water level "in any manner whatsoever."
August 1 In Crooked River Logistics, LLC, the PSBCA dismissed appeals for lack of jurisdiction because: (i) the contractor had failed to file claims with the Contracting Officer; and (ii) the contractor complained of the Postal Service's decision to award two contracts to another firm.
July 31 In Cotton & Co., LLP, an unsuccessful protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that, after (a) the agency had terminated the plaintiff's contract for convenience and issued a new solicitation (because the agency's requirements had changed during delays associated with a prior GAO protest) and (b) the plaintiff had failed to bid on that new solicitation, the court lacked jurisdiction over: (i) the plaintiff's "protest" against the convenience termination because that was a matter of contract administration, and no CDA claim had been filed; and (ii) the plaintiff's protest of the new solicitation because the plaintiff had failed to bid on it and, therefore, lacked standing to protest.
In A Squared Joint Venture, another unsuccessful protest, the court held that there was a rational basis for the agency's decision to eliminate a firm from a competition due to a potential OCI arising from its use of individuals with access to sensitive information to prepare its proposal for a follow-on contract.
July 28 In Michael Roth & Assocs., Architects & Planners, Inc., the Court of Federal Claims dismissed the suit because: (i) the contractor failed to present a claim to Contracting Officer based the legal theory that it ultimately advanced at court, i.e., that the agency allegedly failed to comply with obligations imposed upon it by the contract's "Design Within Funding Limitations" clause (FAR 52.236-22); and (ii) nothing in the contract required the Government to increase the contractor's fee to 6% of the final construction cost estimate once that estimate had been adjusted upward.
In its lengthy and detailed decision on the construction contract disputes in RDA Construction Corp., the court held that: (i) the contractor's superior knowledge argument failed because, even though the Government did not provide relevant information to the contractor concerning a wharf's severe load restrictions, the visible condition of the wharf at the time of prebid inspections should have prompted the contractor to seek additional information; (ii) the contractor was not entitled to recover for a Type 1 differing site condition because the solicitation did not affirmatively indicate that the wharf's condition would be different from what it turned out to be; (iii) the contractor was not entitled to recover for alleged misrepresentation of the wharf's load bearing capacity because there was no such affirmative misrepresentation in the solicitation; (iv) the contractor's cardinal change theory failed because the evidence showed that, before beginning work, the contractor knew of the condition of which it ultimately complained; (v) the Government did not violate its implied duty of good faith and fair dealing in any of the numerous situations complained of by the contractor; (vi) the termination for default was justified and, therefore, the Government was entitled to assess liquidated damages; (vii) the Government's counterclaim under the CDA’s anti-fraud provision, 41 U.S.C. § 7103(c)(2), failed because the contractor's claim was not baseless, indefensibly inflated, or premised on an affirmative misrepresentation of fact; and (viii) the Government's other counterclaims based on various fraud statutes failed for similar reasons.
In Size Appeal of Lost Creek Holdings, LLC d/b/a All-STAR Health Solutions, the SBA's OHA upheld the Area Office's size determination in large part because the appeal was based almost entirely on allegations and evidence that could have been, but were not, presented to the Area Office.
July 27 In Affiliated Western, Inc., the CBCA upheld the default termination of a contractor that fell behind the contract schedule and failed to respond adequately to cure notices, especially where the contractor failed to provide any critical path analysis to support its contention that it had experienced excusable delays on the project. Subsequently, the contractor's motion for reconsideration was denied.
In YRT Enterprises LLC dba Tompkins Investigative Services, the CBCA dismissed an appeal for lack of jurisdiction because: (i) the Contracting Officer's letter asking that the contractor's security credentials be returned to the Government on the last day of the contract was not a termination decision that could be appealed; and (ii) the Board had no authority over claims for injunctive relief, punitive damages, or the allegedly improper withdrawal of security clearances. Subsequently, the Board denied the contractor's request for reconsideration.
July 25 In American Sanitary Products, Inc., an unsuccessful protest of corrective action, the Court of Federal Claims held that an agency's decision to cancel an award and resolicit had a rational basis because the agency had discovered (after a GAO protest by another offeror had been filed) that the agency had underestimated its requirements in the original solicitation.
In XPO Logistics Worldwide Government Services, LLC, which involved unsuccessful consolidated protests by both the original awardee and a competitor against the procuring agency's corrective action (reevaluating past performance references and making a new source selection decision) following earlier GAO protests, the court: (i) denied the original awardee's protest because the court agreed with the GAO that the contemporaneous evaluation record did not show how the agency arrived at its conclusion that the magnitudes of the awardee's past contracts were sufficient to evaluate them as somewhat relevant; and (ii) denied a competitor's protests that the corrective action was insufficiently broad in that it allegedly (i) did not take into account the awardee's unbalanced pricing (the court finding that the Contracting Officer had properly analyzed the offers and found no unbalanced pricing), and (ii) improperly relied solely on total evaluated price in the final cost evaluation (the court finding that this evaluation was consistent with the solicitation's stated evaluation scheme).
In Hanboo Construction Co., Ltd. , the ASBCA dismissed an appeal after the company advised the Board that it knew nothing about the original appeal letter and that the individual who had signed it no longer worked for the company.
In K2 Solutions, Inc., the ASBCA: (i) dismissed the contractor's claims that an alleged option exercise improperly reduced the contract's scope of work (because the Board found that the attempted option exercise was ineffective because it differed from the terms of the contract); but (ii) declined to dismiss the contractor's claim that the Government had breached its duty of good faith and fair dealing with regard to the modification that was not effective as an option exercise because that modification could plausibly be viewed as a new offer that the contractor accepted by beginning performance.
In BAE Systems Southeast Shipyards Mayport LLC, a case involving contract interpretation and plenty of basic mathematical reasoning, the ASBCA held that: (i) a contract's formula for calculating the small business utilization percentage was unambiguous; (ii) the Government's answer to a question formally published in an amendment to the solicitation was incorporated into the final contract as a matter of law; (iii) that answer and the contract's small business utilization formula must be read together; and (iv) the contractor's proposed method of calculating small business utilization was unreasonable because it would result in a utilization figure of more than 200% in one case.
In Northrop Grumman Corp., a decision limited to quantum calculations, the ASBCA sustained the contractor's appeal of the Government's "disallowance" of more than $250 million of the contractor's post-retirement benefit costs because the contractor had underfunded those benefits using a method not sanctioned by FAR 31.205-6(o) and, thus, did not incur the costs or charge the Government for them so that the Government did not suffer any damages.
In Innoventor, Inc., the ASBCA issued a summary judgment in favor of the Government on the contractor's constructive change claim because there was no evidence that any authorized individual required the contractor to perform work not required by the contract's terms.
Effective August 24, a final rule amends the NASA FAR Supplement (NFS) to add policy on the use of additional contract periods of performance or "award terms" as a contract incentive.
July 21 In Commerce Plaza Office Partners, LLC, the CBCA held that, even absent a restoration clause in the lease, the Government, as the tenant of leased space in an office building, was liable for damage to the property that exceeded reasonable wear and tear.
July 20 In InterImage, Inc., the Court of Federal Claims held that, where both the basic CPFF contract and the delivery orders issued under it contained limitations of funding provisions, the limitations provision in each delivery order governed how much the contractor was entitled to recover of both costs and fees in its final invoice at contract closeout, even though the total costs (and claimed fees) that the contractor had incurred had not exceeded the overall funding limit in the base contract.
July 19 In Sonoran Technology and Professional Services, LLC, a dispute involving contract interpretation, the ASBCA held that, under the principle of expressio unius est exclusio alterius (i.e., where one or more objects in a class are specifically named, objects of that class that are not named are excluded), FAR 52.222-43 (the Service Contract Act Price Adjustment clause) does not entitle a contractor to an equitable adjustment for an increase in a state's gross receipts tax. The Board also held that the Changes clause did not authorize such an adjustment in this situation either.
Effective September 18, without further notice, unless the EPA receives adverse comments by August 18, a final rule makes administrative changes (involving updates, corrections and minor edits) to the EPA's acquisition regulations (EPAAR).
July 18 In its latest decision in the protest of Sonoran Technology and Professional Services, LLC, the Court of Federal Claims ordered additional supplementation of the administrative record because supplementation following a prior court order revealed that information previously deemed irrelevant was, in fact, relevant to resolution of the protest.
July 14 In Dell Federal Systems, L.P., et al., a successful protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that the agency's proposed corrective action in response to prior protests was overly broad and that allowing offerors to submit clarifications was all that was required to cure defects in the prior solicitation process, whereas reopening the competition for full-blown discussions was not necessary.
In M.I.T. International Commercial Lending, LLC, the CBCA held that it lacked jurisdiction over an appeal involving a buyer's alleged default in an auction of real property and that, in any event, the appeal should also be dismissed for failure to prosecute after the appellant failed to respond to any one of numerous communications from the Board, which had been sent to it by a variety of alternate methods.
July 13 In Novak Birch, Inc., an unsuccessful protest against proposed corrective action in response to a prior protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that the Contracting Officer's decision to (i) terminate the prior contract award to the current protester, (ii) cancel the solicitation, and (iii) return to market research, had a rational basis in what the Contracting Officer reasonably perceived as defects in the prior solicitation process, and, given those defects, the proposed corrective action was not overly broad.
In QTC Medical Services, Inc., an unsuccessful post-award protest, the court held, inter alia, that (a) under the Blue & Gold Fleet test, the protester had waived its objections to (i) the calculation of the price benchmark, (ii) allegedly misleading discussions about price, and (iii) the methodology used by the agency for calculating price reasonableness, because all of these grounds for protest were apparent, but not protested, prior to the submission of final proposal revisions; (b) there were no unmitigated OCIs on the part of the awardees; and (c) the agency's tradeoff analysis had a rational basis.
In Kirk Ringgold, the CBCA allowed more than $30,000 in legal fees under the EAJA after the Board sustained the contractor's prior appeal involving a claimed amount of $6000.
July 12 In The Informatics Applications Group, Inc., an unsuccessful preaward protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that the Government had reasonably excluded a quotation sent to the eBUY portal rather than by email to the point of contact designated in the RFQ's instructions.
In Cleveland Assets, LLC, the court denied the protester's motion to stay the court's prior decision denying the protest pending appeal to the Federal Circuit because the protester had not shown a substantial case on the merits related to either of its two grounds of appeal.
The VA has modified its regulations to require re-verification of SDVOSB/VOSB status once every three years rather than biennially.
July 11 In NAICS Appeal of Ascendant Program Services, LLC, where the solicitation called for the provision of a wide range of analytical and planning, design, and construction management support services, the SBA's OHA held that the Contracting Officer had correctly selected NAICS code 236220 (Commercial and Institutional Building Construction) rather than any of several alternatives proposed by the appellant.
In SYMVIONICS, Inc., the ASBCA upheld a default termination because the contractor anticipatorily repudiated the contract by notifying the Government that the contractor could not perform unless certain delivery order requirements were modified, especially where the contractor was aware of the Government's interpretation of those requirements prior to award and failed to object.
In Anaconda Construction Co., the ASBCA dismissed an appeal for failure to file within 90 days of receipt of the Contracting Officer's decision.
In UnitedHealth Military & Veterans Services, LLC, an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that, read in the context of the solicitation as a whole, the following provision did not require the Government to conduct a price realism evaluation:
July 10 In Size Appeal of the Frontline Group, the SBA's OHA remanded the case to the Area Office to analyze whether the protested firm would perform the bulk of the primary and vital requirements of the contract in compliance with the ostensible subcontractor rule or whether that firm and its proposed subcontractor were exempt from the application of the rule as "similarly situated entities" pursuant to 13 C.F.R. § 121.103(h)(4).
In Sonoran Technology and Professional Services, LLC, the Court of Federal Claims authorized the protester to depose the Contracting Officer for a limited amount of time concerning two specific issues to correct deficiencies in the administrative record concerning the agency's decision to take corrective action, but denied the contractor's requests: (i) to depose SBA officials concerning their handling of a CoC referral from the contracting agency; and (ii) to extend the Contracting Officer's deposition to other alleged deficiencies in the record that were not necessary for the court's analysis of the protest.
The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has amended the EAR) to reflect changes to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) Annex that were agreed to by MTCR member countries at the October 2016 Plenary in Busan, South Korea, and the March 2016 Technical Experts Meeting (TEM) in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. This final rule revises thirteen Export Control Classification Numbers (ECCNs), adds one ECCN, revises two EAR defined terms (including making other EAR conforming changes for the use of these two terms) and makes conforming EAR changes where needed to implement the changes that were agreed to at the meetings and to better align the missile technology (MT) controls on the Commerce Control List (CCL) with the MTCR Annex.
July 7 In SFM Constructors, Inc., the CBCA denied the Government's motion to dismiss an appeal because, although the cover letter to the contractor's claim stated the contractor was seeking "at least" a specified amount, the actual certified claim stated a sum certain.
July 6 The GAO sustained a portion of a protest filed by Global Aerospace Corp. because, in a NASA solicitation under an SBIR program, the contemporaneous record did not include any analysis of the protester's proposal at the SMD recommendation phase, and the subsequent analysis prepared by the agency to respond to the protest lacked a rational basis.
In Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education on behalf of The Desert Research Institute, an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held, inter alia, that: (i) the court had no basis to conclude that the agency should have assigned deficiencies rather than weaknesses to the awardee's proposal; (ii) where the solicitation was to be conducted without discussions, a broken link to its cost data in the protester's proposal, which made it impossible for the agency's evaluators to access data that would allow them to determine the realism and reasonableness of the protester's proposed costs, was not minor clerical error, did not require the agency to seek clarification, and did not prejudice the protester because, even after finding the protester's proposal unacceptable, the agency still explained why the awardee's proposal was a better value due to its technical superiority; and (iii) under the Blue & Gold Fleet standard, the protester's post-award challenges to the agency's failure to provide certain information to prospective offerors was untimely.
The ASBCA sustained an appeal by Hallmark-Phoenix 3, LLC because: (i) the Government had failed to reimburse the contractor for the increased wages and fringe benefits it was required to pay as a result of DOL wage determinations applicable during an extension period of the contract; and (ii) the Government's affirmative defenses to the contractor's claim were untimely raised.
July 3 The 2017 Procurement Review is up (through June 30), and, as usual, I will keep updating it for the rest of the year.
July 1 In i3 Cable & Harness LLC, an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that: (i) the protester had waived its challenges to (a) the agency's use of undisclosed quantities to re-evaluate price and (b) a patent ambiguity in the solicitation regarding the required place of manufacture, because the protester had failed to object to these issues prior to submitting its offer; (ii) the quantities used by the agency to re-evaluate prices after corrective action had a rational basis; and (iii) the protester had not submitted any evidence to support its OCI allegations or its allegations of bad faith.
Dell Services Federal Government, Inc. won its GAO protest because: (i) the agency's Procurement Integrity Act determination that the disclosure of the protester's proposals had not adversely the competition was not reasonable; and (ii) the agency did not adequately investigate or address possible OCIs of the protester's competitor.
June 29 In SupplyCore Inc., an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that: (i) the agency had not used unstated evaluation criteria in the past performance evaluation because the solicitation specifically alerted offerors that past performance in the areas of the current technical evaluation would be examined; (ii) the agency's discussions with the protester were adequate; and (iii) the agency's past performance ratings of the awardee had a rational basis.
June 28 In Quimba Software, Inc., the Court of Federal Claims held that the contractor's deferred compensation costs were allowable under an exception to 26 C.F.R. § 1.404(b)-1T because the deferral was "unintended, unavoidable, and unanticipated."
Pinnacle Solutions, Inc. won its GAO protest because the record: (i) did not support the evaluators' assignment of weaknesses to various aspects of the protester’s proposal; (ii) reflected the evaluators' disregard of portions of that proposal; and (iii) indicated the agency had used unstated evaluation criteria.
June 27 In ABS Development Corp., the ASBCA denied the Government's motion to dismiss consolidated appeals as having originally been filed prematurely because, despite a subsequent stay by the Board to permit the Contracting Officer to issue a decision, he failed to do so within a reasonable time or within the time the Government had indicated a decision would be issued.
In Presentation Products, Inc. dba Spinitar, the ASBCA held that a contract clause (FAR 52.212-4) stating that the contract price included all applicable federal, state, and local taxes precluded the contractor's claim for reimbursement of Hawaii's state excise tax even though the contractor's bid had stated it did not include that tax.
June 26 In Claude Mayo Construction Co., the Court of Federal Claims denied the Government's motion to dismiss a breach-of-contract count of the contractor's amended Complaint because the pleading clearly alleged a contractual obligation (to pay the contractor) that the Government refused to meet.
June 23 The GAO sustained a protest by Innovation Assocs., Inc. because the awardee's proposed system failed to comply with two material requirements of the solicitation.
June 22 In accordance with Executive Order 13777, DoD requests comments by August 21 on DFARS solicitation provisions and contract clauses that may be appropriate for repeal, replacement, or modification.
In Kellogg Brown & Root Services, Inc., a case that included appeals on remand from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the ASBCA decided several motions to dismiss and held, in the main, that the Government's prior material breach of a contract (i.e., the Government's failure to provide the contractor and its subcontractors with the contractually promised level of force protection) excused the contractor's subsequent noncompliance with the contract's prohibition against the use of private security companies (PSCs), the reasonable costs of which the contractor was, therefore, entitled to recover.
In Size Appeal of Teracore, Inc., the SBA's OHA held that the Area Office had correctly used a tax return filed after the date of a firm's self-certification, but available during the size determination, in calculating a firm's size.
In Size Appeal of Ordnance Holdings, Inc., the OHA dismissed (as untimely) an appeal filed more than 15 days after the appellant was deemed to have received an email transmitting the Area Office's size determination because that email address was the same address the appellant used in subsequently filing its appeal.
In Size Appeal of Bridgeway Professionals, Inc., the OHA dismissed an appeal of a finding of violation of the ostensible subcontractor rule as moot because the underlying solicitation had been cancelled.
June 21 The GAO sustained one of the protest grounds in SITEC Consulting, LLC, et al. because the agency's evaluators deviated from the evaluation scheme for Past Performance by improperly assigning a "confidence" rather than a "neutral" rating to several offerors who lacked relevant performance.
June 20 In Melwood Horticultural Training Center, Inc., the ASBCA dismissed an appeal for lack of jurisdiction because the contractor's claim as a whole did not state a sum certain, although portions of it did include definite sums.
In L.C. Gaskins Construction Co., the ASBCA: (i) rejected the Government's affirmative defense of fraud in the inducement based on language in the contractor's proposal because the solicitation's specifications were ambiguous and problems caused by miscommunications between the contractor and one of its subcontractors did not rise to the level of an affirmative misrepresentation; and (ii) analyzed the contractor's claim that the discovery of hazardous material in spent blast debris resulting from the removal of existing paint constituted a Type I Differing Site Condition.
June 17 The GAO sustained a protest by Red River Computer Co., finding an unequal price evaluation where the agency's price evaluators permitted one awardee to propose on a basis forbidden by the solicitation and denied to other offerors.
June 15 In Continental Service Group, Inc., the Court of Federal Claims discussed in detail the tests for determining whether (and when) actions are moot and then denied the Government's motion to dismiss the protesters' actions as moot because the Government's corrective action in response to prior protests was not complete and the plaintiffs might suffer additional harm in the interim.
June 14 The GAO sustained protests by Next Tier Concepts, Inc.; MAXIMUS Federal Services, Inc. due to a flawed price realism evaluation because the price evaluators' conclusion (that the awardee's prices were so low as to indicate a lack of understanding of the technical requirements) was not communicated to the technical evaluators or considered in the final source selection decision.
In Matter of ORB Solutions Inc., the SBA's OHA held that, in denying a firm's application for admission to the 8(a) program based on a finding that its owner was not economically disadvantaged, the SBA (i) properly counted the amount of an advance to the claimed disadvantaged owner of the applicant as an asset because the evidence did not establish it was a loan whose repayment was required; (ii) properly characterized a personal loan from the owner to the applicant 8(a) firm as an asset of the owner; and (iii) reasonably valued purchase agreements for corporate investments to purchase properties and an office for the applicant firm in India.
In 2Connect W.L.L., the ASBCA held that a 15-year irrevocable right-of-use lease for a segment of a telecommunications circuit that the contractor had procured in preparation to perform an order was an allowable cancellation cost under the definition of "actual nonrecoverable cost" in DFARS 252.239.7007 (i.e., that the contractor could not otherwise have recovered the cost in its normal business operations) after the Government cancelled the order (as a result of a successful protest) prior to the time the contractor began performing actual services under the order.
In Zafer Construction Co., the ASBCA held that a contractor that had failed to take advantage of prebid opportunities (i) to inspect the site, (ii) to review detailed drawings, and (iii) to ask questions, could not establish the elements for recovery of unanticipated costs under any of its theories of of unilateral mistake, unconscionability, or differing site conditions.
In Pro-Built Construction Firm, the ASBCA determined the recoverable portions of direct labor, subcontract costs, DBA insurance, G&A, and profit claimed by the contractor as a result of a termination for convenience prior to the notice to proceed on a contract for the construction of a police station.
In [Redacted], ASBCA Nos. 60814, 60864 (June 1, 2017), the ASBCA dismissed an appeal for lack of jurisdiction because the contractor had failed to submit a signed certification to the Contracting Officer on a claim in excess of $100,000 prior to filing its appeal.
June 11 In JHCH Properties #2, LLP, the PSBCA held that the contractor was liable for certain back charges (but not others) after it failed to comply with the Postal Service's requests to repair premises leased by the contractor to the Postal Service, forcing the Postal Service to have the repairs performed by a third party.
June 9 The GAO sustained a protest by Knight Point Systems, LLC because, in a solicitation for quotations under an FSS contract, the agency did not reasonably consider whether the services offered by the protester through its subcontractors were within the scope of the protester's GSA schedule contract, but, instead, considered only whether the cloud systems offered by the protester were listed by brand name on the protester's GSA schedule contract, which was not a requirement of the solicitation.
June 8 In Andrews Contracting Services, LLC, the ASBCA dismissed an appeal for lack of jurisdiction because the contractor's Request for Equitable Adjustment did not request a Contracting Officer's decision and, therefore, was not a CDA claim.
June 6 The GAO sustained parts of a protest by TOTE Services, Inc., because the agency: (i) failed to adequately document its evaluation of past technical performance; (ii) credited offerors for relevant performance without considering its quality; and (iii) credited offerors for positive performance without considering its relevance.
June 5 In Cleveland Assets, LLC, an unsuccessful preaward protest, the Court of Federal Claims held, inter alia, that rental rate cap in the Government's solicitation for lease proposals was not unreasonably low or unduly restrictive of competition, in part because the Government had received multiple offers in response to the solicitation and the rate cap was the maximum amount authorized by Congress.
In Iron Bow Technologies, LLC, an unsuccessful post-award protest, the court denied the protester's request for a TRO and preliminary injunction because, inter alia, the protester was not likely to succeed on the merits of its challenges to the technical and price evaluations due to the protester's failures: (i) to adequately explain the changes to the labor hour in its revised technical proposal (the discussions concerning which were neither incomplete nor misleading); and (ii) to provide sufficient information on the relationship of the figures in its price proposal to the revised technical proposal to the allow the agency to assess price reasonableness.
June 2 The SBA has issued a final rule, effective July 4, amending the rules of practice of the OHA to implement section 869 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 and section 1833 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, which authorize OHA to decide Petitions for Reconsideration of Size Standards after the SBA publishes a final rule in the Federal Register to revise, modify, or establish a size standard.
The GAO sustained a protest by AdvanceMed Corp. because, in its cost realism evaluation, the agency failed to recognize and reasonably assess two aspects of the likely costs stemming from the awardee’s proposed technical approach.
June 1 In IAP Worldwide Services, Inc., the ASBCA held that the Government had constructively (and compensably) accelerated the contractor's task order performance requirements by failing to timely grant the contractor's requests for time extensions due to Pakistan's closure of a border on the contractor's route, but the border closing was not a breach of a warranty of availability because the Government had not made, agreed to, or, by its conduct, created any such warranty.
In L-3 Communications Integrated Systems L.P., the Court of Federal Claims dismissed a suit for lack of jurisdiction because the contractor had never submitted a certified claim to the Contracting Officer prior to filing suit. I would have liked to have seen some discussion of the possibility that the case involved a government claim, however. The parties had reached an impasse on the terms and price for definitizing an undefinitized contractual action. Pursuant to DFARS 252.217-7027, therefore, the Contracting Officer had issued a unilateral modification establishing the price. The DFARS clause states that such unilateral modifications are "subject to Contractor appeal as provided in the Disputes clause," and the Government included the following language in the modification just to drive home that point: "The purpose of this modification is to unilaterally definitize the Undefinitized Contract Action (UCA), subject to contractor appeal as provided in the Disputes clause, due to the parties not being able to reach an agreement on final price." So, both the clause and the modification refer to the contractor's right of "appeal," not to its obligation to first file a claim.
May 31 In PDS Consultants, Inc., a successful preaward protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that the VA is required to perform a Rule of Two analysis for all future procurements, regardless whether they involve items on the AbilityOne list, i.e., that the requirements of the the Veterans Benefits Act of 2006 essentially trump those of the Javits-Wagner-O’Day Act.
May 30 In Esther Wurzberger and Char's Hallmark Cards & Gifts, Inc., the PSBCA denied wrongful termination claims by two contractors whose contract postal units had been terminated by the Postal Service as a result of a collective bargaining agreement with the postal workers' union. Each contract contained a Termination clause that permitted termination without cause by either party upon a specified number of days' advance notice, so the PSBCA rejected all the contractors' theories of recovery, including bad faith and breach of the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing.
In NAICS Appeal of Creative Information Technology, Inc., the SBA's OHA held that, in a solicitation to provide a complete range of support in managing and operating a Refugee Processing Center, the Contracting Officer reasonably selected NAICS code 541512 (Computer Systems Design Services) rather than NAICS code 518210 (Data Processing, Hosting, and Related Services) for the small business set-aside.
May 29 In Matter of Redhorse Corp. (PFR), the SBA's OHA dismissed a Petition for Reconsideration of its original decision dismissing an SDVOSB status protest as untimely because: (i) the PFR relied on arguments that could have been, but were not, made during the original protest; (ii) the PFR incorrectly interpreted 13 C.F.R. 125.18(e)(1)(iii) as creating an exception to the normal rule that recertification is not required for a particular order unless the Contracting Officer requests it; and (iii) the Supreme Court's ruling in Kingdomware Technologies does not change SBA's rules in this area.
May 27 In accordance with Executive Order 13777, "Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda," the GSA is seeking input on acquisition regulations, policies, standards, business practices and guidance issued by GSA across all of its acquisition, disposal, and sales programs, that may be appropriate for repeal, replacement, or modification. Comments are due by July 31.
May 26 In Horn & Assocs., the Court of Federal Claims held that, viewing the work on a contract for the performance of recovery audits as a whole, the Government severely impeded and failed to cooperate with the contractor in its work, which prevented the contractor from completing the totality of the contract requirements and constituted a breach by the Government of its duty of good faith and fair dealing.
May 24 The GAO sustained portions of consolidated protests by Mevacon NASCO JV; Encanto Facility Services, LLC, because: (i) the agency failed to conduct meaningful discussions with one protester by neglecting to alert it to weaknesses in its technical proposal that the agency evaluated as creating a high risk of unsuccessful performance; and (ii) the award decision failed to explain why the agency selected the higher-rated, but also higher-priced, proposal for award.
In Harmonia Holdings Group, LLC, an unsuccessful preaward protest of the scope of the agency's corrective action in response to a prior protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that the agency was not required to limit the corrective action to a reevaluation and could also revise the solicitation to address issues the agency saw in the original solicitation that were not specifically raised in the prior protest.
May 23 The ASBCA dismissed an appeal by American Green Land Construction Co. for lack of jurisdiction because there was no evidence the contractor had sumitted its claim to the Contracting Officer prior to filing the appeal.
May 22 In Government Services Corp., the ASBCA denied the Government's motion to dismiss for failure to prosecute because the contractor had not "repeatedly" missed filing deadlines, and there was no showing of prejudice to the Government from the deadline the contractor had missed.
In CTA I, LLC, the CBCA denied the contractor's petition to require the Contracting Officer to issue a decision by specified date that was only 17 days from the date of the filing of the petition because the contractor did not identify any circumstances that would require such a rushed decision.
May 19 In Vintage Autoworks, Inc., an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims rejected the protester's objections to the agency's responsibility determination concerning the awardee because the requirements the protester alleged the awardee failed to meet were contract requirements, and, thus, were matters of contract administration, not solicitation requirements.
May 17 The VA continues to propose revisions to its acquisition regulation (the "VAAR") to update it and harmonize it with the FAR, with the latest proposed revisions focusing on Parts 801-803, 812, 814, 822, and 852. Comments on the proposed changes are due by July 17.
May 16 In Parsons Government Services, Inc., a dispute stemming from the contractor's contention that the Government had violated statutory requirements for the source of contract funding (thereby allegedly rendering the contract void ab initio, entitling the contractor to recover in quantum meruit), the ASBCA dismissed the appeal for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted because the statutes at issue provided no private cause of action.
In Public Warehousing Co., K.S.C., the ASBCA denied the contractor's motion: (i) to lift the Board's earlier order imposing a one-year stay of an appeal involving the contractor's affirmative claims; and (ii) to certify that earlier order for interlocutory appeal to the CAFC.
May 15 In Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, LLC, the CBCA denied the contractor's "petition" requesting the Board either to direct the Contracting Officer to issue a decision within 30 days or to treat his failure to have issued a decision prior to the submission of the petition as a deemed denial. The Board found that the contractor's various submissions (claim, petition, and briefs) were inconsistent and confused the procedural requirements applicable to claims for less than $100,000 with those for claims in excess of $100,000. More than 35 years after the deceptively simple appearing CDA became law, litigants still are getting bogged down in its procedural quagmires.
In a related Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, LLC, decision issued the same day as the one above, the CBCA dismissed an appeal for lack of jurisdiction because the Contracting Officer lacked authority to issue a decision on a claim where the matter had been referred to the DOJ due to suspected fraud, and, therefore, his failure to issue a decision could not be treated as a deemed denial.
I don't know why I failed to report on the following decision when it first appeared, but the ASBCA just denied the Government's motion for partial reconsideration of that decision, so I am catching up now. In Supreme Foodservice, GmbH, on various dispositive motions submitted by both parties, the ASBCA originally held, inter alia, that: (i) the Board had jurisdiction to entertain the DLA's claim and affirmative defense that the contract at issue was void ab initio due to fraud in the inducement; (ii) the Board had jurisdiction to entertain the DLA's claim and affirmative defense that the contract was void ab initio due to a conflict of interest; (iii) the DLA's affirmative defenses were not claims and, thus, were not subject to the contractor's untimeliness (limitations) contentions; (iv) the DLA's conflict-of-interest claims under 18 U.S.C. §§ 207(a)(l), 207(a)(2), and 208(a) were barred by the CDA's limitations period because the DLA knew or should have known of a post-employment conflict of interest issue at the time of contract award; (v) a bilateral settlement agreement released, and, therefore, barred the DLA's subsequent fraud in the inducement claims pertaining to an affiliated subcontractor of the contractor, but not the DLA's affirmative defenses based on this same ground; (vi) genuine issues of fact precluded summary judgment in favor of the Government on its affirmative defense of first material breach. Now, the Board has denied the Government's motion for partial reconsideration of the original denial of the Government's motion for summary judgment on the issue of first material breach.
May 12 In Jonathan Noeldner, the CBCA denied the contractor's claim on a timber sales contract because the Government did not require the contractor to cut smaller diameter trees than he was contractually responsible for harvesting, and statements by the Government's sale administrator erroneously interpreting the contract were irrelevant.
In T. K. Hughes Auto Sales, Inc., the CBCA denied the contractor's claims for rust on the undercarriages of two automobiles bought at a government auction because the vehicles were not misdescribed, there was no warranty against such rust, and the buyer had an opportunity to inspect the vehicles prior to bidding.
May 10 In IT Enterprise Solutions JV, LLC, an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that: (i) under a standard dictionary definition of the word "count," the Government had complied with the terms of the solicitation by giving the protester's joint venture as a whole credit for the relevant experience of its minority member, but was not required to give that experience the same weight as that of the majority member who would be performing more of the required effort; (ii) under the standard dictionary definition of the verb "address," the Government had correctly evaluated the relevancy of the past performance of a proposed subcontractor, especially where the protester offered no alternative definition for the term, and, in any event, the protester was not prejudiced by any errors in this aspect of the evaluation; (iv) the Government followed the solicitation's requirements in evaluating the "recency" of a proposed subcontractor's past performance; and (v) in its tradeoff analysis, the agency could distinguish between offerors that had the same general adjectival rating. Concerning the "recency" issue, the court held that the agency correctly determined one proposed subcontractor failed to meet the criteria for recency because its ongoing contract had been ongoing one week short of the six months required by the solicitation, even where that work was a continuation of work that had been ongoing for several prior years, because the protester had not identified that prior work as part of its proposal submission.
In Gazpromneft-Aero Kyrgystan LLC, the court denied the contractor's claim for reimbursement of back taxes assessed by the Kyrgyz Republic because the contractor failed to give timely notice of the assessment pursuant to the requirement of FAR 52.229-6(j), which prejudiced the DoD's ability to address the issue.
In Turner Construction Co., an unusual, non-CDA case decided by the CBCA under the construction contract's Disputes clause, the Board summarized its holding as follows:
The Board’s role in this matter is to find a reasonable price for the construction services that Turner provided in the renovation of the American History Museum.	We are tasked with this assignment because, despite Smithsonian’s promises both in the original contract and during contract performance, Smithsonian never negotiated a firm fixed price for much of the work Turner performed. Smithsonian has a renovated museum, and the Board is deciding herein what additional sums are owed to Turner for that building. The difficulty in this case was principally of Smithsonian’s own making. If Smithsonian had agreed to a firm fixed price for the construction, Turner would have been bound to that price, subject to adjustment for changes and other increases. Having failed to execute the bargain prior to the provision of services, Smithsonian cannot reap the benefits of a bargain it wishes it had struck.
The Board finds that Turner and its subcontractors incurred costs to address problems for which Smithsonian is responsible—hazardous waste abatement, mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) interferences, and continuing design changes. On this record, Turner may recover based upon a quantum meruit theory. Turner’s subcontractors used more conventional methods to attempt to prove their disruption claims arising from these same issues, and some succeeded. However, none of Turner’s subcontractors proved their claims for extended overhead flowing from contract delays.
Regarding Smithsonian’s claim for overpayment based upon its audit of Turner’s project costs, the Board finds that Smithsonian has not met its burden. While the audit exposed areas that merited further investigation, Smithsonian did not undertake those necessary steps. Instead, it simply demanded repayment and has failed to establish a proper basis for that demand.
May 9 In Size Appeal of Aerosage, LLC, the SBA's OHA held that the Area Office correctly found that a firm offering only to use its "best efforts" to comply with the nonmanufacturer rule did not meet that rule's requirements.
In Tetra Tech, Inc., an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that, "[w]hile it is a close question," a particular work assignment was within the scope of (i.e., "did not materially depart from") the Performance Work Statement of the underlying contract and, therefore, was not issued in violation of CICA.
In First Division Design, LLC, the ASBCA held that, after a convenience termination, the contractor was entitled to recover the portion of the contract price that the Government had withheld because the Government did not dispute the contractor's contention on appeal that it had completed the work; however, in this situation, the contractor was not entitled to recover home office overhead because it was not a cost "resulting from" the termination under FAR 52.212-4(l).
In Swinerton Builders Northwest, a decision that includes 230 pages of factual findings alone in a complex construction contract dispute, the ASBCA held, inter alia, that: (i) although there were many disagreements and inopportune comments by both sides during the project, neither side's positions rose to the level of a bad faith desire to harm the other; (ii) the contractor's proposal did not clearly apprise the Government that it included an alternative or deviation from the solicitation's HVAC/mechanical requirements, and the contractor failed to prove the Government approved any such deviation or otherwise waived the contract requirements in this area at the time of award; (iii) the Government's later approval of an alternative design was only done to avoid further delays to the project caused by the contractor's stubborn insistence on the use of an alternative design and was not a basis for a constructive change or delay claim by contractor (the Government not being required "to exercise the patience of Job"); (iv) the contractor released certain aspects of a Differing Site Conditions claim in a bilateral modification, but was entitled to 14 days of compensable delay damages; and (v) although the Government breached the contract by denying access to the worksite to a Project Manager, the contractor failed to prove damages from the breach.
May 8 In Size Appeal of Gregory Landscape Services, Inc., the SBA's OHA affirmed the Area Office's finding that a firm owned 51% and 49% by a wife and husband, respectively, was affiliated, though identity of interest, with a firm owned by the husband's parents and siblings, in which the husband was a major employee.
In what the OHA noted was the fifth appearance before it of an epic battle involving a joint venture's qualifications, the OHA held in Size Appeal of Alpine/First Preston JV II, LLC, that the protester's joint venture agreement met the requirement in 13 C.F.R. § 124.513(c)(6) that it contain a provision "[i]temizing all major equipment, facilities, and other resources to be furnished by each party to the joint venture, with a detailed schedule of cost or value of each. . . ."
In Size Appeal of Olgoonik Diversified Services, LLC, the OHA held that the Area Office erred in several ways, e.g.: (i) in finding appellant was in a joint venture with two sister companies (because the Area Office had been misled by the firm's use of the term "joint venture" in its proposal for a Department of State procurement, where that department has a different definition of joint venture from the one used by the SBA to determine eligibility); and (ii) in finding appellant affiliated with sister companies under the ostensible subcontractor rule because they were not subcontractors and because appellant is a business concern owned and controlled by an ANC and, therefore, is not considered affiliated with other concerns owned by that ANC because of common ownership, common management, or performance of common administrative services. 13 C.F.R. § 121.103(b)(2)(ii))
May 5 In SecTek, Inc., the CBCA held that the Government was not liable for the successor contractor's underestimation of the costs for vacation time of the predecessor contractor's employees the successor had retained in a contract covered by the Service Contract Act because the Government was not required to furnish the successor with a seniority list (which would have helped it estimate such costs) until after award, and the successor did not effectively object to the terms of the solicitation (or reserve its rights) regarding this issue in submitting its offer.
The GAO sustained a protest by Verdi Consulting, Inc., holding that: (i) the protester was an interested party because it showed a "reasonable possibility" of prejudice by successfully challenging the Past Performance, Price, and tradeoff evaluations, even where several technical proposals were rated higher; (ii) the agency waived its right to object at the GAO to the fact that the protester failed to submit a revised price proposal because the agency evaluated the protester's final proposal (and that of another offeror) without objection; (iii) the agency improperly downgraded the protester's Past Performance proposal based on an unstated evaluation factor, and the agency's Past Performance evaluation was insufficiently documented; (iv) nothing in the record indicated the agency evaluated option year pricing, as was required by the solicitation; and (v) the agency's best-value tradeoff analysis was inadequately documented and showed the agency failed to take into account option year pricing.
May 4 In Size Appeal of NuGate Group, LLC, the SBA's OHA upheld the Area Office's dismissal of a protest as insufficiently specific because it failed to include any evidence or documentation to support its allegations.
In Enhanced Veterans Solutions, Inc., an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that: (i) there was a rational basis for the agency's assignment of a Marginal rating to the protester's proposed staffing reductions under the Operational Approach subfactor in the Technical evaluation, and the protester's counter-arguments relied on an unreasonable interpretation of the solicitation documents; (ii) the agency's methodology of assigning a Marginal rating to the Technical factor as a whole if an offeror received a Marginal rating in any one of the equally-weighted subfactors was not objectionable; and (iii) the agency's decision not to include the protester's low-priced proposal in the best value tradeoff analysis was not objectionable in the circumstances of this procurement, especially when the SSA's decision clearly explained why the proposal would not have been successful even if it had been included. This is a good example of how difficult it is to win a protest because the court was obviously working hard to find a justification for the agency's actions in each of the three areas summarized above.
In Idaho Stage LLC, the court held that the plain meaning of a contract as a whole favored the contractor's interpretation, and, even if the contract were ambiguous, that ambiguity was latent and, therefore, should be construed against the Government as the drafter.
In Continental Services Group, Inc., et al., the court issued a preliminary injunction in a complex case involving multiple parties to preserve the status quo until the Government announced its corrective action in response to a prior GAO decision on a protest.
May 3 In Size Appeal of Veterans Construction Coalition, LLC, the SBA's OHA remanded the protest to the Area Office for further investigation because, based on its mistaken view of the scope of the former exception to affiliation found at 13 C.F.R. § 121.103(h)(3)(ii), the Area Office had failed to consider the protester's allegations that two firms were generally affiliated.
May 2 In Senate Builders and Construction Managers, Inc., the Court of Federal Claims denied the construction contractor's claim for recovery of its costs of importing backfill material because all the contractor's theories of recovery relied on an unreasonable interpretation of the Government's answer to a pre-bid question, which was included in an amendment to the solicitation prior to bidding.
In Dellew Corp., the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the prior CoFC decision awarding EAJA costs to a protester, because comments by a CoFC judge from the bench during a hearing favoring the protester's position, but not memorialized in a court order or opinion, did not confer "prevailing party" status on the protester. The appeals court also criticized the lower court's reliance on its own precedent rather than that of higher courts: "We reaffirm a well -known principle that the Court of Federal Claims failed to follow here: the Court of Federal Claims must follow relevant decisions of the Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit, not the other way around." Ouch.
May 1 In Raytheon Co., the ASBCA held, inter alia, that: (i) the burden on the Government to prove that challenged costs are expressly unallowable and subject to a penalty is to show that it would be unreasonable under all the circumstances for a person in the contractor's position to conclude that the costs were allowable; (ii) the burden on the contractor to prove that the Contracting Officer's decision not to waive the penalty for expressly unallowable costs is to show that the decision constitutes an arbitrary and capricious abuse of discretion; (iii) neither the contractor's aircraft fractional lease costs nor its Challenger 604 aircraft lease costs are expressly unallowable costs under a FAR cost principle or executive agency FAR supplement and, therefore, are not subject to a penalty on expressly unallowable costs; (iv) the salary expenses of employees who engage in activities that generate unallowable lobbying costs are expressly unallowable costs, and the contractor did not meet its burden to prove that the Contracting Officer abused his discretion in declining to waive the penalty for such costs; and (v) the costs of the design and build of its M&A application, which was a proposed database intended to be used both for general planning and specific M&A purposes when ultimately configured, but which was terminated before it was completed and was never used in connection with any M&A target, were allowable economic and market planning costs and, thus, were not expressly unallowable and were not subject to penalty.
In Northwest Title Agency, Inc., the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the CoFC's prior decision that the contracts at issue unambiguously precluded the contractor (who was providing closing services) from charging closing fees to homebuyers and, therefore, extrinsic evidence of trade practice could not be used to vary the plain meaning of the contract.
The ASBCA shut out MULE Engineering, Inc. on all of its construction contract claims, finding, inter alia, that: (i) the contractor's inability to perform certain contract work with its own personnel and its delays in employing a subcontractor for that effort constituted concurrent delays that barred one of its claims under the "Suspension of Work" clause; (ii) the Army's alleged delays were not the cause of the allegedly higher-than-anticipated cost of the contractor's subcontract with its metal building and concrete subcontractor; (iii) the contract required installation of a disputed building column, and the Board was not bound by Contracting Officer's decision granting the contractor certain of its claimed costs for installing the column; (iv) the contractor not entitled to its costs of replacing a unit it ordered with a duct on the wrong side because the contract drawings contained a patent ambiguity about which the contractor had failed to inquire prior to bidding; (v) any government-caused delay in delivery of a dehumidifier was not on the critical path and, therefore, did not entitle the contractor to extra compensation; and (vi) the Board not bound by part of the Contracting Officer's decision erroneously granting part of the contractor's claim for allegedly excess curb pours, because the contract contained a patent ambiguity on this issue about which the contractor, again, had failed to inquire.
In Campus Management Corp., the ASBCA: (i) denied several of the contractor's claimed termination for convenience costs because they were not supported by evidence in the form of contractor's standard business records; and (ii) held that the contractor was entitled to CDA interest beginning from the time it submitted its CDA claim for invoices that Government had unreasonably delayed in paying (in addition to Prompt Payment Act interest accruing prior to the date of the claim).
April 30 In Open Spirit, LLC, an unsuccessful preaward protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that legitimate environmental contamination concerns of which the Government became aware near end of a lease competition, not bad faith or bias, caused the Government to cancel the competition.
In The Concourse Group, LLC, an unsuccessful post-award protest, the court held that: (i) the technical evaluation did not employ any unstated evaluation criteria regarding relevant experience; and (ii) the agency's discussions with the protester were meaningful and fair.
April 28 Competitive Range Solutions, LLC, won its GAO protest because the agency’s exclusion of the company's proposal from the competition based on its failure to have sufficient capabilities in health-related missions amounted to a nonresponsibility determination that should have been referred to the SBA under its COC procedures.
The CBCA dismissed an appeal by JDM, LLC for failure to prosecute because, after the company's original counsel withdrew from the representation in favor of its President, the President failed to respond to the next several orders and communications from the Board.
April 26 The GAO sustained a protest by A-P-T Research, Inc. because: (a) in a situation where the non-incumbent awardee had proposed a high retention rate for incumbent employees and the agency had determined that the awardee’s proposed professional compensation was at the low end of the experience and compensation scales used for evaluation, the contemporaneous record lacked a reasoned basis for finding the awardee’s professional compensation or proposed costs to be acceptable or realistic; and (b) there was no indication in the contemporaneous record that, during the evaluation process, the agency (i) had assessed a potential impaired objectivity OCI posed by the awardee’s major subcontractor or (ii) had found the awardee’s proposed mitigation plan to be sufficient.
In Gallup, Inc., the Government undertook corrective action and paid the protester's attorneys fees as a self-imposed sanction after it discovered and reported to the court that the Contracting Officer had prepared a Memorandum for the Record justifying a small business set-aside after the protest against the set-aside had been filed but had back-dated it to make it appear as if it were a part of the contemporaneous record.
April 25 Walden Security won its GAO protest because the procuring agency violated the terms of the solicitation by failing to permit the offeror to address adverse past performance information to which it was not previously allowed to respond.
In Islands Mechanical Contractor, Inc., the ASBCA dismissed an appeal for lack of jurisdiction because a significant portion of the contractor's "claim" was actually just a proposal for additional work, and, therefore, did not satisfy the CDA requirement that it demand a sum certain as a matter of right.
April 24 In Size Appeal of Lost Creek Holdings, LLC d/b/a ALL-STAR Health Solutions, the SBA's OHA vacated the Area Office's decision to dismiss a protest for lack of standing because the OHA found there was no clear evidence to support the Area Office's finding that the size protester's proposal in response to the solicitation at issue was technically unacceptable.
April 21 In Suffolk Construction Co., the CBCA issued a public reprimand to the contractor's attorney because, without the agency's consent, he removed the agency's contract drawings from its counsel table in a courtroom during a break in hearing proceedings, had them scanned by a third party vendor before returning them, and gave contradictory explanations/justifications for his actions.
In Dream Management, Inc., a decision under the small claims procedure that the CBCA, therefore, labels as nonprecedential, the Board held that: (i) the plain language of a task order under an FSS contract established it was a time-and-materials, rather than an IDIQ, order; (ii) a significant government error in estimating the quantity of work involved was not a breach because there is no basis for a negligent estimate claim in a T&M contract; (iii) a bilateral modification purporting to end the order was not a valid method of terminating it and, therefore, the cancellation should be treated as a termination for convenience; and (iv) as part of its T for C claim, the contractor was entitled to some of the subcontract costs it incurred as a result of the agency's erroneous estimate for the work. It's a shame the decision is nonprecedential because these were all significant legal issues that were addressed.
April 19 In its latest decision in K-Con Building Systems, Inc., which is interesting in part because the court previously held that the default termination underlying these disputes was invalid, the Court of Federal Claims (i) denied the contractor's motion to amend its Complaint to include an appeal of a deemed denial of a claim for convenience termination costs because that claim, having been submitted to the Contracting Officer more than six years after it accrued, was untimely, and (ii) held that (a) the contractor had abandoned certain claims and had not established excusable delay because the Government's review of its drawings complied with the contractual requirements; (b) the contractor had failed to establish that any government-caused delays affected the critical path of performance; and (c) the Government had established its entitlement to liquidated damages in part because the contractor had failed to establish any affirmative defenses to the assessment of those damages.
In TKC International LLC, the ASBCA dismissed the appeal because the individual filing the appeal failed to present any evidence that he was currently an "officer" of the company entitled to represent it in accordance with Board Rule 15.
In [Redacted], ASBCA No. 60841 (Apr. 3, 2017), the ASBCA dismissed another appeal because the underlying claim was in excess of $100,000 and, therefore, required a signed certification, but included only a typed signature block without an actual signature.
In Brittishan Enterprises Corp., the CBCA dismissed an appeal for failure to prosecute because, after the original corporate representative died, the contractor's counsel was unable to locate any corporate representative who was willing to prosecute the appeal.
April 18 SBA proposes to amend its small business size regulations by incorporating the OMB's NAICS revision for 2017 ("NAICS 2017") into its table of small business size standards, effective October 1. NAICS 2017 created 21 new industries by reclassifying, combining, or splitting 29 existing industries under changes made to NAICS in 2012 ("NAICS 2012"). SBA’s proposed size standards for these 21 new industries have resulted in an increase to size standards for six NAICS 2012 industries and part of one industry, a decrease to size standards for two, a change in the size standards measure from average annual receipts to number of employees for one, and no change in size standards for twenty industries and part of one industry. Comments on the proposed rule are due by June 19.
April 14 In the consolidated appeals of Cook Mail Carriers, Inc. and Patricia J. Sasnett, the PSBCA, inter alia, upheld the termination of two contracts under the Termination with Notice clause because, even though the Contracting Officer was mistaken about why changes in mail routes were needed, he had a right to terminate on 60 days notice with or without cause, and he would still have terminated the contracts and consolidated the routes if he had known the correct facts, so he did not act in bad faith.
In William Finley, although the PSBCA held it had jurisdiction over an appeal involving a monetary claim that the Postal Service declined to renew a contract due to racial discrimination, the Board granted summary judgment in favor of the Government because there was no evidence (beyond the contractor's speculations) that the Postal Service abused its discretion or acted in bad faith or from discriminatory motives in declining to renew a contract so that mail routes could be consolidated.
In MBD Maintenance, LLC, the PSBCA held that a release signed by the contractor after the contractor was aware of the facts giving rise to a mistake in bid claim barred that claim.
April 13 In Kevin Diaz, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the prior CoFC decision and held that the protester lacked standing to complain that the Government improperly rejected his unsolicited proposal because the proposal failed to fulfill the requirements of FAR 15.603(c) and, thus, the protester did not have a direct economic interest in the procurement, i.e., did not have a substantial chance of receiving a contract.
In Greenland Contractors I/S, an unsuccessful post-award protest, after the CAFC had vacated the court's earlier decision, the Court of Federal Claims decided two issues that had not been addressed in the prior litigation and held that: (i) the procuring agency had not conducted misleading discussions with the protester by failing to advise it of each individual CLIN price that was significantly higher than its competitors' prices because the solicitation required the agency only to evaluate the total price and the prices for two specific CLINs; and (ii) the solicitation language advising offerors to "show justification for unique practices that significantly lower pricing" did not require offerors to show justification for all lower prices but only for unique practices that lowered prices significantly.
In By Light Professional IT Services, Inc., an unsuccessful post-award protest, the court held that: (i) the protest of a solicitation requirement not raised before the submission of final offers was untimely, especially where the agency had specifically warned the offeror of the requirement during discussions prior to the submission of final offers; (ii) the agency reasonably assigned a deficiency to the protester's proposal for failing to provide a required task order number for one of the contracts it was submitting to satisfy the Experience sub-factor; (iii) there no prejudice to the protester from the agency's decision to raise a competitor's score under the Past Performance factor because the agency did the same with the protester; and (iv) the procuring agency's trade-off analysis (which recognized that one offer had more strengths in the Technical Capability factor despite the fact that both offers received the same overall rating) had a rational basis.
In General Revenue Corp., et al., a decision involving consolidated protests by 15 protesters that defies a brief summary, the GAO (i) held that the agency's evaluation failed to comply with solicitation's evaluation scheme in multiple areas and lacked rational bases, but (ii) sustained the protests only of those protesters who demonstrated prejudice from the evaluation errors.
April 11 In a blistering opinion highly critical of the agency's conduct, the Court of Federal Claims held in Starry Assocs., Inc., that the procuring agency's repeated misconduct and misrepresentations, which had forced the protester to file multiple protests to vindicate its rights, constituted a "special factor" under the EAJA, entitling the protester to recover its attorneys fees at the actual rates charged, rather than at the normal statutory cap of $125 per hour.
In Exelis Inc., the ASBCA held that: (i) the contractor's executive compensation costs were unallowable under FAR 31.205-6(i) because they were based on securities price changes and dividend payments rather than on the employee's individual performance; and (ii) the Contracting Officer was justified in imposing a penalty on the disallowed costs because they were expressly unallowable.
In [Redacted], ASBCA Nos. 60300, 600302 (Mar. 29, 2017), the ASBCA upheld default terminations after the contractor lost access to its work areas due to a vendor vetting process, which determined that it was a Force Protection Threat to United States and Coalition forces at Kandahar Airfield.
In Military Aircraft Parts, the ASBCA upheld the cancellation of a purchase order because the contractor failed to deliver conforming items in a timely manner.
April 10 In Jacobs Technology, Inc., the Court of Federal Claims rejected challenges by both the awardee and its competitor to the proposed scope of the agency's third round of corrective actions, after the agency had repeatedly chosen the same awardee after the earlier rounds of corrective action.
April 5 In Agility Public Warehousing Co. KSCP, FKA Public Warehousing Co. K.S.C., the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the part of the ASBCA's prior decision concluding that the Government had not breached the express terms of a contract, but remanded the case to the ASBCA to consider two claims that the Board had simply stated, without explanation, that it need not consider: "We need not decide whether the government constructively changed contract performance or whether it breached its implied duty of cooperation. At its core, whether the government breached the contract comes down to contract interpretation."
April 4 The CBCA dismissed an appeal by Consultis of San Antonio, Inc., for lack of jurisdiction because the issue on appeal (which involved the interpretation of the terms of the underlying GSA Schedule contract) should have been decided by the GSA Schedule contract Contracting Officer rather than by the VA's task order Contracting Officer.
In Public Warehousing Co. K.S.C., the ASBCA granted the Government's motion to amend its answer to include additional affirmative defenses, except laches, and stayed the appeal for one year to permit parallel criminal proceedings in district court to proceed.
April 1 In Continental Services Group, Inc., after the Government declined to commit to continuing a previous stay triggered by a prior GAO protest and the protester alleged the Government was diverting work to other contractors to circumvent the protest, the Court of Federal Claims issued a TRO, even though the record was not sufficiently developed yet for the court to determine the protester's likelihood of success on the merits, because the other three factors the court weighs in deciding such motions favored the protester.
In Rivada Mercury, LLC, an unsuccessful challenge to the protester's elimination from the competitive range, the court held that: (i) extensive communications and exchanges between the Government and the offerors prior to establishing the competitive range were specifically contemplated by the solicitation's selection plan for this complex procurement and did not constitute discussions because offerors were neither requested nor permitted to revise their proposals prior to establishment of the competitive range; and (ii) the protester's quarrels with numerous aspects of the agency's technical evaluation all lacked merit.
In Matter of Redhorse Corp., the SBA's OHA reconciled the interpretations of 13 C.F.R. §§ 125.18(e) and .25(d) and held that a protest against a firm's SDVOSB status, filed after issuance of an order set aside for SDVOSBs in an option year of a GSA Schedule contract, was untimely because the Contracting Officer had not requested recertification of the offerors' SDVO status in connection with the solicitation for the order.
March 31 In Tidewater Contractors, Inc., the Court of Federal Claims issued a summary judgment dismissing the contractor's breach of contract claim because: (i) although an FHWA Manual established trade practice applicable to certain of the disputed issues, it could not be used to vary the contract's terms; and (ii) none of the contractor's multiple assertions of alleged improprieties in various aspects of the Government's selection and testing of the contractor's concrete density core samples established that it was improper for the Government to reject them.
In Seneca Sawmill Co., the court denied the Government's motion to dismiss a suit for failure to state a claim because the contractor's allegation (i.e., that the Government improperly reduced the acreage to be harvested under a timber sales contract in violation of the contract's termination provision and as a result of the Government's mishandling of issues concerning the protection of northern spotted owls in the area) was sufficient to state a claim for breach of contract.
March 29 In ASW Assocs., a case involving contract interpretation, the CBCA held that, because the contract lacked a guaranteed minimum quantity or any clause requiring the Government to order all its requirements from the contractor, the contract was neither an ID/IQ nor a requirements contract, and, thus, the contractor was entitled to be paid only for the actual work it performed.
March 28 In Kansas City Power & Light Co., the Court of Federal Claims denied the plaintiff/contractor's motion to strike the Government's affirmative defense of "offset" because that affirmative defense is not a CDA "claim" that requires a Contracting Officer's decision prior to being raised in court.
In Q Integrated Companies, LLC, the court denied the Government's motion for relief from a prior judgment in favor of a bid protester because the SBA's post-judgment finding that the protester was not an eligible small business for contracts in geographic areas different from those at issue in the protest did not necessarily mean it would not be able to compete under a reopened competition for the area under dispute in the current protest.
In Pyrotechnic Specialties, Inc., the ASBCA upheld a default termination (and denied related claims), holding, inter alia, that: (i) discussions concerning extending the contract schedule did not result in an agreement to do so; (ii) the contractor failed to present sufficient evidence that production defects were caused by the Government's allegedly defective specification rather than by the contractor's own production problems; (iii) the Government was not required to approve the contractor's requests for deviations; (iv) even if the Government had tightened the test acceptance requirements in one area, the contractor's failures on another test would still have justified the rejection of its units; (v) a government email suggesting a default termination but not addressed to the Contracting Officer and not directing Contracting Officer to terminate was not evidence the Contracting Officer had failed to exercise independent judgment in terminating the contract; and (vi) there was no evidence of a bad faith termination.
In USAC Aerospace Group dba USAC Aerospace Group Ordnance Division, the ASBCA dismissed an appeal because the alleged corporate appellant failed to provide evidence of (i) its legal capacity to bring its appeal or (ii) the authority of its alleged representative under Board Rule 15.
In DCX-CHOL Enterprises, Inc., the ASBCA dismissed an appeal as moot because the Contracting Officer had rescinded the underlying demand for payment that was being appealed.
March 27 In CB&I AREVA MOX Services, LLC, the CBCA held that the clear language of a bilateral contract modification precluded the contractor's claim for an increase in its fee percentage based on an option that was never exercised. Subsequently, the Board denied the contractor's request for reconsideration.
March 22 The GAO sustained a protest by XPO Logistics Worldwide Government Services, LLC because the solicitation required an assessment of the magnitude of the offerors’ past efforts relative to the solicited requirement, but the record failed to show how the awardee’s comparatively low-value past efforts reasonably could have been assessed as somewhat relevant.
In Progressive Industries, Inc., after a prior bid protest judgment in favor of the plaintiff, the Court of Federal Claims denied the plaintiff's motion to alter the prior judgment (because the plaintiff's motion was untimely) and denied the plaintiff's alternative motion for relief from that final judgment because the plaintiff did not show entitlement to that relief under Rule 60(b). (Basically, the plaintiff objected to the corrective action the Government undertook in response to the prior protest.)
March 21 In Industrial Consultants, Inc. dba W. Fortune & Co., the ASBCA upheld a default termination because the contractor's failure to perform was due to its disagreement with the Government's project design rather than any excusable causes.
In Public Warehousing Co., K.S.C., the ASBCA held it lacked jurisdiction to certify its prior decisions (staying an appeal the during pendency of a related district court fraud case and allowing the Government to amend its answer to assert affirmative defenses) for interlocutory review by the CAFC.
In Shippers Stevedoring Co., the ASBCA dismissed an appeal because neither the appellant nor its representative responded to numerous board communications inquiring whether the representative met the requirements of Board rule 15(a).
March 20 In Mercom, Inc., an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that there was a rational basis for the agency's assignment of an "Unacceptable" rating to one aspect of the protester's technical proposal, reasoning as follows: "[The protester] failed to submit satisfactory evidence of qualifying experience related to sub-factor B2. Mercom’s proposal does not describe its work under the contracts it cited in sufficient detail to enable the agency to reasonably conclude that Mercom performed all of the work stated and had the requisite depth and breadth of experience to be awarded the contract. The contract references provided by Mercom frame the company’s work pursuant to sub-factor B2 hypothetically, i.e., in terms of work that Mercom could perform rather than work it actually did perform."
In Level 3 Communications, LLC, the Court of Federal Claims held that the Government's counsel had repeatedly violated his duty of candor to the court by leading the court to believe performance on a protested contract had not begun when, in fact, it had.
In Size Appeal of INV Technologies, Inc., the SBA's OHA reversed the Area Office's finding of affiliation under the totality of circumstances because the Area Office's findings of fact did not support the conclusion that either allegedly affiliated firm could control the other or that an individual was a key employee of the allegedly affiliated firm, based solely on his job title.
In Size Appeal of Coulson Aviation USA, Inc., the OHA held that: (i) the Area Office had correctly determined from the firm's original proposal that the firm clearly was not the manufacturer of the contract items; and (ii) the firm's wholesale revisions to its proposal in response to the size protest were irrelevant.
March 16 In Foxy Construction, LLC, the CBCA held it lacked jurisdiction over an appeal because, for various reasons (lack of certification, no request for Contracting Officer's decision), none of the contractor's three letters to the Contracting Officer satisfied the requirements for a CDA claim.
March 15 In Supply & Service Team GmbH, the ASBCA held that the (perhaps broader-than-necessary) waiver language in a valid bilateral modification, which was supported by consideration, precluded the Government from subsequently challenging the costs of a Technical Order previously paid to the contractor. Subsequently, the Board denied the Government's motion for reconsideration.
In Military Aircraft Parts, the Board: (i) rejected the contractor's argument that the CAFC's holding in Sikorsky Aircraft (i.e., that the six-year limit for submitting claims is not a jurisdictional statute of limitations) should be extended to apply to the CDA's 90-day limit for appealing Contracting Officer's decisions; and (ii) held that, absent evidence of when the contractor had received a government email transmitting another Contracting Officer's decision, there was no basis to dismiss an appeal from that decision as untimely.
In Rover Construction Co., the ASBCA denied the Government's motion to dismiss an appeal for lack of jurisdiction because, viewed as a whole, numerous emails between the contractor and the Government sufficed to convert a routine invoice into a claim.
In [Redacted], ASBCA No. 60597 (Mar. 3, 2017), the Board held that, despite several questionable government actions that might otherwise have converted a settlement proposal into a disputed claim, there was no jurisdiction because the proposal exceeded $100,000, but was uncertified.
March 14 In The Concourse Group, LLC, an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that the plaintiff had waived its OCI objections because it had not raised them prior to the close of the bidding process even though they were based on facts that were easily recognizable or obvious before that time.
March 12 The VA is proposing to amend and update its acquisition regulation (the "VAAR") to revise or remove any policy that has been superseded by changes in the FAR, to remove any procedural guidance that is internal to the VA, and to incorporate any new regulations or policies. These proposals are being made in increments, and the current proposal covers the sections of the VAAR concerning "Types of Contracts" and "Bonds and Insurance." Comments are due by May 12.
March 9 In Size Appeal of Technology Assocs, Inc., the SBA's OHA held that the Area Office had correctly determined that the challenged firm was not the manufacturer because it would not utilize its “own facilities” to manufacture the contract item (an ice-breaking tugboat), as required by 13 C.F.R. § 121.406(b)(2).
In Size Appeal of CTSI-FM, LLC, the OHA held that, although the Area Office had correctly found affiliation among three firms based upon identity of interest between two brothers, the Office had erred in finding affiliation with another firm through common management because the challenged individual held no management position in the allegedly affiliated firm.
March 8 The ASBCA's website is back up, but all the links to individual cases (and to the main website itself) have been changed from the form "http://asbca.azurewebsites.net. . ." to "http://www.asbca.mil. . . ." So, I'm having to change all the links in my website to match. I have already corrected the links on my ASBCA decisions page, in this 2017 blog, and in the past years' blogs and in the contract disputes sections of the past procurement reviews. There are probably some scattered links on other pages that still need correcting, and I will try to get to them soon.
In A-T Solutions, Inc., the ASBCA rejected the Government's attempt to disallow certain charges for items that had been part of interdivisional transfers, (i) holding that such transfers were "at price" and, thus, the contractor was entitled to charge the Government at price under FAR 31.205-26(e), and (ii) rejecting the DCAA's attempt to establish a requirement that such transfers must have "economic substance" (whatever that means--the Board could not figure it out either).
In Carter Safety Consultants, Inc., the ASBCA held it lacked jurisdiction over an appeal filed more than 90 days after receipt of the Contracting Officer's decision, noting that a possible attempt to file the appeal within 90 days at the wrong forum (in this case, the GAO) was unavailing.
In Military Aircraft Parts, the ASBCA held that the contractor's failure to appeal a default termination decision within 90 days was not excused by the fact that the contract did not include a "Default" clause.
In Thorington Electrical and Construction Co., the ASBCA held that a claim submitted more than six years after it accrued was time-barred, and there was no provision in the CDA to cure this problem by allowing the claim to "relate back" to an earlier claim concerning which the Contracting Officer already had issued a decision and which already had been disposed of on appeal.
In Astro Systems, Inc., the ASBCA held that the contractor not entitled to recover profit on the cost of repairing damages to a vehicle it had leased to the Government.
In Agility Services Logistics Co., on remand from the CAFC, which had ordered the Board to determine the identity of the real party in interest in the appeal, the ASBCA held that such a determination was irrelevant to its original decision that it lacked jurisdiction over contracts with the Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq, regardless of the identity of the real party in interest, and that, in any event, the parties had not provided the Board with the information necessary to determine the real party in interest, and the Board lacked the expertise to answer question under Iraqi law on its own. In other words, the Board politely thumbed its nose at the court.
In [Redacted], ASBCA No. 60652, the Board dismissed an appeal for lack of jurisdiction absent evidence the contractor had submitted a claim to the Contracting Officer.
In Sigmatech, Inc., the Court of Federal Claims denied the Government's request to seek an advisory opinion from the GAO because the record before the court includes several hundred pages of documents not originally available to the GAO and waiting for a GAO review would delay the proceedings unnecessarily.
March 7 Harmonia Holdings Group, LLC, won its GAO protest because nothing in the record showed the agency had conducted a required best-value tradeoff analysis between the awardee's higher-priced, higher technically-rated proposal and protester's lower-priced, lower technically-rated proposal.
In Quality Control International, the CBCA granted the contractor's request to amend its complaint to add a constructive change theory of recovery to its original claim for relief under the Price Adjustment clause because both theories arose from same operative facts, even though the constructive change theory added overhead and profit as elements of claimed damages not previously submitted to the Contracting Officer for decision.
In 1441 L Assocs., LLC, the CBCA held that the plain language of the extension agreement in a lease resolved the question of the quantum of the cumulative operating costs to be paid by the agency.
In ServiTodo, LLC, the CBCA held that the clear release language of a bilateral settlement agreement barred the current claim.
In Eastco Building Services, the CBCA refused to dismiss an appeal brought under a "dba" name because both the agency and relevant documents recognized that the assumed name entity and the real entity were one and the same.
March 3 In CSR, Inc., the GAO sustained the protest because: (i) the agency engaged in disparate treatment of offerors in its past performance evaluation by limiting its review of the protester's CPARs to projects specifically identified in its proposal, without imposing such a restriction on the review of the awardee's CPARs; and (ii) the best-value tradeoff analysis offered no explanation for finding the awardee's corporate experience superior to that of the protester when the two firms had been rated equally in this area by the evaluators.
Similarly, the GAO sustained a protest by Tribalco, LLC, because the agency had engaged in disparate treatment of offerors by overlooking the same type of flaws and omissions in the awardee's Integrated Master Schedule for which agency had downgraded the protester's proposal.
In CompuCraft, Inc., the CBCA held: (i) it lacked jurisdiction over the portion of the contractor's appeal requesting the Board to order the Government to change a performance evaluation; and (ii) the Board's review was not limited by any findings of fact in the Contracting Officer's underlying decision.
March 1 In Pitney Bowes, Inc., a successful protest, the GAO found that the agency's specifications were unduly restrictive of competition because the agency failed to establish that they were required to meet its needs.
February 27 In Size Appeal of K2 Group, Inc., the SBA's OHA held that the Area Office had correctly determined a size protest was untimely because the agency's delay in awarding the contract did not toll the normal requirement that size protests must be filed within five days after receipt of the pre-award notice of the identity of the prospective awardee.
In Size Appeal of Platinum Business Services, LLC, the OHA held that the Area Office had correctly determined a size protest involving the award of a task order under a multiple-award schedule contract was untimely because task order solicitation did not require recertification of size status.
In Size Appeal of ProSol Assocs., LLC, the OHA held that the Area Office had correctly found affiliation based on identity of interest among family members because the appellant failed to establish a clear fracture between father and son.
In Size Appeal of Quadrant Training Solutions, LLC, after remand from the CoFC, the OHA affirmed its prior decision's finding of affiliation because the document court directed the OHA to consider did not support the conclusion that SBA had extended approval of a mentor-protégé relationship for another year. As noted in the decision, the regulations governing such extensions have since been revised to relax the requirements.
February 21 I just called the ASBCA and was told that their website is down for "administrative reasons" and that, although they will try to have it back online soon, they do not have an estimate as to when that will be. UPDATE--Received the following only slightly more definitive explanation in response to an email I sent the recorder's office: "The Board's website is currently down due to server issues. We are working feverishly to correct the problem. We hope to have the website publically available within a week. In the meantime, if there is a specific document you require, please make a request to the ASBCA Recorder's email address . . . and we will do our best to accommodate."
February 20 The VA has issued an interim final rule requiring reverification of SDVOSB/VOSB status only every three years rather than biennially.
February 18 I apologize if the blog has been a bit spottier than normal recently, but I've been in the process of moving from Texas to Colorado. All finished now, so things should be back to normal.
I still have not heard why the ASBCA's website is down. If any one of you knows, please let me know, too.
In H.C. Beck, Ltd., the CBCA denied the Government's motion to dismiss the appeal for failure to state a claim and held that the contractor's references to the "Differing Site Conditions" and "Request for Equitable Adjustments" clauses were sufficient to proceed with an appeal involving a claim for removing significantly more asbestos-containing materials than the contract originally contemplated.
February 16 In Limco Airepair, Inc., an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that: (i) the Government conducted an adequate price realism analysis simply by comparing the prices of the only two offers received in response to the solicitation; and (ii) the protester failed to establish prejudice from the Government's ex parte communication with the awardee. I'm not persuaded by the former holding and believe the Government's approach was only (barely) adequate to establish price reasonableness, as in the next decision below.
In Munilla Construction Management, LLC, another unsuccessful protest, the court held that: (i) comparing the prices of four offerors satisfied the requirement to evaluate price reasonableness, without any obligation to determine whether an offered price was too low; and (ii) the Government appropriately examined individual CLIN pricing to determine whether unbalanced pricing had occurred.
February 15 In Active Network, LLC, a successful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims remanded the case to the procuring agency to conduct a price realism analysis because there was scant, if any, evidence in the administrative record that the agency had evaluated price realism in accordance with the clear requirements of the solicitation.
February 14 In Size Appeal of First Nation Group d/b/a Jordan Reses Supply Co., LLC, the SBA's OHA held that the Area Office erred in finding affiliation under the totality of the circumstances based mainly on a subordinated, unsecured note that did not give one firm the power to control the other.
In Size Appeal of Charitar Realty, the OHA held that the Area Office correctly found affiliation under the ostensible subcontractor rule because the proposed subcontractor was the incumbent contractor and prime's proposed personnel were former employees of the subcontractor.
February 13 If any one of you knows why the ASBCA's website is down, please email me and I will share that information with the rest of our visitors.
February 8 In KWR Construction, Inc.--Costs, the GAO recommended the protester be reimbursed its costs of pursuing a protest ground raised in response to the agency report because: (i) the protest was clearly meritorious even though the GAO required further development of the record to demonstrate that the agency's response to the protest was not meritorious; and (ii) the agency unduly delayed taking corrective action when it put the protester to the further expense of replying to the agency's response to the protester's meritorious protest ground.
In Systems Dynamics International, Inc., an unsuccessful protest against elimination from the competitive range, the Court of Federal Claims held that: (i) the protester had waived its rights to object to patent omissions in the solicitation of (a) data required to comply with a solicitation requirement and (b) historical staffing mix and levels, because it had not protested prior to the submission of proposals (even though it had suggested the latter data be added to the solicitation); and (ii) the Government's price evaluation had a reasonable basis.
February 7 In Ecosystem Investment Partners, the Court of Federal Claims dismissed a protest because: (i) the plaintiff neither submitted a bid nor timely protested the issuance of a solicitation, and, thus, lacked standing; (ii) the letter the plaintiff sent providing comments on the proposed solicitation did not fulfill the requirements for an agency-level protest; and (iii) the Government's decision that ultimately led to the solicitation was not a procurement decision and, thus, was not within the court's protest jurisdiction.
In Agility Defense & Government Services, Inc., the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the CoFC and held that, contrary to the lower court's findings, the evidence supported the contractor's contentions that: (i) the Government had provided inadequate or negligent estimates of the anticipated workload, and (ii) the contractor had detrimentally relied on the faulty estimates.
In Truckla Services, Inc., the ASBCA upheld a default termination because: (i) the contractor had completed only 13% of the work within the contractual performance period, and the Contracting Officer's conclusion that the contractor's plan to complete the work was not reasonably certain nor finalized was supported by the evidence and not an abuse of discretion; and (ii) the BP oil spill, while complicating the contractor's efforts to find barges, did not excuse its failure to perform because the contractor had located two subcontractors capable of performing the work.
In Niking Corp., noting that such motions are not favored, the ASBCA denied the contractor's motions to strike (as insufficiently vague) the Government's affirmative defenses or require more definite statements, holding that the Board's rules require only notice pleading and that there was already a detailed record in the claim and the Contracting Officer's decision, which established the Government's positions on the claims.
In Size Appeal of Global Submit, Inc., the SBA's OHA held that the Area Office had properly declined to publish the protested firm's proprietary information in a size decision and that the Area Office had correctly applied the OHA's longstanding interpretation that 13 C.F.R. § 121.105(a)(1) does not bar foreign-owned small businesses from participating in small business set asides, provided that the small business is based in the U.S. and contributes to the U.S. economy.
In Size Appeals of MPC Containment Systems, LLC, and GTA Containers, Inc., the OHA held that (on remand after a prior OHA decision) the Area Office had correctly found that the protested firm was a manufacturer and that there was no affiliation through identity of interest because the firm was widely held by entities who had competing interests)
In Size Appeal of Precision Asset Management Corp. and Q Integrated Companies, LLC, the OHA denied a Petition for Reconsideration because, in deciding issues involving a mentor-protégé agreement, there was no reason to deviate from the normal rule that size is determined as of the date of the initial offer.
In Size Appeal of A-P-T Research, Inc., the OHA held that the Area Office had correctly found there was no affiliation under the ostensible subcontractor rule because although the Area Office misidentified the contract's primary and vital requirements, the challenged firm will perform the bulk of the actual primary and vital requirements and is not unduly reliant on its subcontractors.
February 2 In Paradise Pillow, Inc., the CBCA held that a contractor who had fully performed the required work under a bilateral contract modification, which required it to retrieve blankets it had previously delivered to Government, was entitled to the compensation stated in that modification after the Board found the Government's subsequent attempt to terminate the contract for cause was invalid and should be converted to a T for C.
In BES Design/Build LLC, the CBCA dismissed (for lack of jurisdiction and as premature) an appeal filed before the date the Contracting Officer had timely set for issuance of a decision on the contractor's claim.
February 1 In an interesting case about the limits of the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing, the CBCA held, in TranBen, Ltd., that, where the Government had ordered the minimum required quantity in an IDIQ contract to supply travel vouchers and where the contractor alleged the Government had misled the IRS into approving the use of debit cards as a substitute for vouchers by inaccurately apprising the IRS that vouchers were not readily available, which in turn, allegedly breached the duty of good faith and fair dealing and resulted in fewer orders for vouchers under the contract, the contractor had failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted in the form of monetary damages because the alleged breach by the Government was not sufficiently related to its duty to the contractor under this particular contract to be actionable. I said it was an interesting case; I did not promise it would not leave you scratching your head.
January 31 In South Bay Boiler Repair, Inc., the ASBCA held that the plain language of a ship repair contract satisfied the requirements of 10 U.S.C. 7311 to notify the contractor of "the types and amounts of hazardous wastes that are required to be removed by the contractor from the vessel, or that are expected to be generated, during the performance of work under the contract" so that the contractor was not entitled to extra compensation for removing what it claimed were unanticipated quantities of hazardous materials.
January 27 In CanPro Investments, Ltd., the Court of Federal Claims: (i) dismissed (for lack of jurisdiction) the counts of the complaint based on allegations of superior knowledge, impossibility of performance, and entitlement to rescission of the lease because they were not first presented to the Contracting Officer; (ii) dismissed other parts of the complaint because the plaintiff failed to allege plausible grounds for its claims of mutual mistake, misrepresentation and concealment, impracticability of performance, and frustration of purpose; and (iii) held that the plaintiff had sufficiently pled a plausible breach-of-contract claim based on the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing for conduct occurring after execution of the disputed lease. Subsequently, the court denied the Government's motion for reconsideration of the portion of the decision allowing the claim for breach to proceed.
January 26 Threat Management Group, LLC won its GAO protest because the limited information made available by the agency supported the protester's contention that the agency had issued an out-of-scope task order rather than competing the requirement.
In Global Dynamics, LLC, an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that, where the agency's discussion questions created a patent ambiguity as to whether the agency was conducting a price realism analysis, the protester had a duty to inquire about their meaning and, not having done so, could not later complain about the effect of its decision to raise its prices based upon its (mistaken) assumptions about the agency's intentions.
In EnergX, LLC, the CBCA dismissed an appeal (from an agency's decision to reject a VECP) for lack of jurisdiction because there was no certified claim underlying the original appeal, even though the prior judge had granted the parties extensions of time to allow the Contracting Officer to issue a decision on a certified claim.
January 25 In First Crystal Park Associates Limited Partnership, the Court of Federal Claims held that: (i) where a lease option contemplated renewal of the entire leased space, the Government's alleged attempt to renew only a portion of the space was not an effective option exercise; (ii) the Government official who allegedly reached an oral agreement with the plaintiff to exercise an option for only a portion of the space lacked the authority to modify the lease or create a new one; and (iii) an alleged verbal agreement concerning the partial option exercise was not binding because it was not reduced to writing as the parties apparently had contemplated it would be.
January 24 In Technology Systems, Inc., over a dissent, the ASBCA held, inter alia, that: (i) the doctrine of retroactive disallowance of costs (under which the Government is estopped from challenging the same type of costs it has allowed in the past) requires a showing of affirmative misconduct by the Government (which was not present in this case); (ii) DCAA's failure to object to costs in past audits, without more, is not sufficient to prevent the Government from questioning those same types of costs in subsequent audits under either a retroactive-disallowance or course- of-dealing theory; and (iii) FAR 31.205-33 (covering professional and consultant service costs) does not establish a blanket requirement for the generation and provision of "work product" in order to recover such costs. The Board also ruled on several other specific types of costs in dispute between the parties.
In K-Con, Inc., the ASBCA denied the contractor's claim for the Government's delays in issuing notices to proceed, holding that, in contracts for the construction of public buildings, the bonding requirements of FAR 52.228-15 are mandatory and represent a significant component of public procurement policy and, therefore, are deemed to be incorporated in those contracts by operation of law under the Christian doctrine, even when mistakenly omitted from the contract documents. Subsequently, the contractor's motion for reconsideration was denied.
January 23 In Kirk Ringgold, the CBCA held that, under a lease, the Government was liable for holdover rent for the period the agency took to restore the property after vacating it. To reach the merits, the Board found that the lessor had submitted a CDA claim when, after the Contracting Officer had disputed the contractor's right to holdover rent, the contractor's wife "emailed the contracting officer a final invoice with the note, 'An add’l 15 days rent, $6,000, is owed through 10/09/15 when SFS contractors were gone and rock removed. Please process this invoice for prompt payment of this agreed on amount for . . . helibase use.'"
January 20 The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has issued a final rule amending the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to implement the India-U.S. Joint Statement of June 7, 2016 (which recognized the United States and India as Major Defense Partners) and, specifically: (i) to establish a licensing policy of general approval for exports or reexports to, or transfers within, India of items subject to the EAR and controlled only for National Security or Regional Stability reasons; and (ii) to amend the end use and end user provisions of the Validated End User (VEU) authorization to state that items obtained under authorization VEU in India may be used for either civil or military end uses other than those that are for use in nuclear, "missile," or chemical or biological weapons activities.
The BIS has issued another final rule, to be effective April 19, which: (i) requires persons intending to export or reexport to Hong Kong any item subject to the EAR and controlled on the Commerce Control List (CCL) for national security (NS), missile technology (MT), nuclear nonproliferation (NP column 1), or chemical and biological weapons (CB) reasons to obtain, prior to such export or reexport, a copy of a Hong Kong import license or a written statement from the Hong Kong government that such a license is not required; and (ii) requires persons intending to reexport from Hong Kong any item subject to the EAR and controlled for NS, MT, NP column 1, or CB reasons to obtain a Hong Kong export license or a statement from the Hong Kong government that such a license is not required.
January 18 In Size Appeal of DataSavers of Jacksonville, Inc., the SBA's OHA held that the Area Office had correctly dismissed the following protest allegation as speculative and insufficiently specific: "One of the basis for my pending protest to the GAO is that the award of this contract would clearly violate the Ostensible Subcontractor Rule if in fact the subcontractor is not a small business. If the subcontractor is a small business, then, there is a possibility the Ostensible Subcontractor Rule would not be violated if the affiliation between the prime and sub does not exceed the size standard . . . ."
In IT Shows, Inc., an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that: (i) the awardee's plan to dedicate a project management office and its staff exclusively to the contract and to bill them as direct rather than overhead costs did not violate the solicitation's requirements or the FAR; (ii) the procuring agency was not required to inform the protester during discussions that it could do the same because its billing of these items as overhead costs was not a deficiency in its proposal; and (iii) the protester waived its right to the protest agency's intention to use ceiling rates in its cost realism analysis because that intention was clearly stated in the solicitation and, therefore, should have been protested before the close of the bidding process.
In A.T.I TACOSE S.C.a.R.L., the ASBCA granted the Government's motion for summary judgment and held that: (i) the contractor's reliance on a single drawing that did not depict speakers in sleeping rooms was unreasonable because the specifications clearly stated that requirement and took precedence over the drawings pursuant to the Order of Precedence clause; and (ii) the firm, fixed-price design-build contract required the contractor to comply with European and Italian building code requirements and, therefore, the contractor was not entitled to extra compensation for complying with elements of those requirements it discovered only after award.
In Military Aircraft Parts, the ASBCA granted the Government's motion for summary judgment because a bilateral modification was clear and unambiguous and constituted a release and an accord and satisfaction of the contractor's claims.
In Ahtna Environmental, Inc., the CBCA used its discretion to stay an appeal to permit the Contracting Officer to issue a decision on the merits of the contractor's claim after a prior Board decision had rejected the basis for the Contracting Officer's original decision, which had addressed only the issue of whether a release barred the claim.
FAR Case 2015-033: A proposed rule would amend the FAR to implement Executive Order 13693 (Planning for Federal Sustainability in the Next Decade) and the biobased product acquisition provisions of the Agricultural Act of 2014 (also known as the 2014 Farm Bill). Comments are due by March 20.
January 17 In York Telecom Corp., an unsuccessful post-award protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that a protest of the agency's determination that the plaintiff was not an eligible small business under the solicitation's size standard was untimely because the protest had not been raised until after the notice of award in a situation where the questions and answers issued during the solicitation process had created a patent ambiguity as to the applicable size standard for the competition (and, indeed, the solicitation was poorly drafted, imposing a size standard with a 150 employee limit and, in the same breath, specifying the nonmanufacturer rule, which has a 500-employee limit for nonmanufacturers).
January 14 Walker Development & Trading Group, Inc., won its GAO protest because, despite having been given numerous opportunities to do so, the procuring agency failed to provide a consistent, rational explanation for canceling a solicitation and extending the incumbent's contract.
January 13 Federal Acquisition Circular (FAC) 2005-95 has been published and includes the following five final rules:
FAR Case 2013-014: A final rule amends the FAR to establish the uniform use of line items in federal procurements.
FAR Case 2016-004: A final rule amends the FAR to implement a section of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 to raise the simplified acquisition thresholds for special emergency procurement authority from $300,000 to $750,000 within the United States and from $1 million to $1.5 million outside the United States.
FAR Case 2015-012: Effective January 19, a final rule amends the FAR to implement a section of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015, that prohibits the use of funds, appropriated or otherwise made available, for a contract with an entity that requires employees or subcontractors to sign an internal confidentiality agreement that restricts such employees or subcontractors from lawfully reporting waste, fraud, or abuse to a designated government representative authorized to receive such information.
FAR Case 2012-022: A final rule amends the FAR to implement regulatory clarifications made by the Small Business Administration regarding the 8(a) program, including, inter alia: (i) revisions to the language at FAR 19.804–6(a) to clarify that offers and acceptances are required for individual orders under multiple-award contracts that were not set aside for competition among 8(a) contractors; (ii) revisions to the language at FAR 19.814(a) to indicate that the SBA Inspector General can request a formal size determination; and (iii) revisions to the language at FAR 19.815 regarding the release of requirements from the 8(a) program, in order to clarify that any follow-on 8(a) requirement shall remain in the 8(a) program unless there is a mandatory source for the requirement pursuant to FAR 8.002 or 8.003 or the SBA agrees to release the requirement for procurement outside the 8(a) program.
FAR Case 2015-016: A final rule amends the FAR to implement section 857 of the Carl Levin and Howard P. ‘Buck’ McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015, which includes additional requirements relative to the allowability of costs incurred by a contractor in connection with a Congressional investigation or inquiry.
The Department of Agriculture is proposing to amend the Guidelines for Designating Biobased Products for Federal Procurement (Guidelines) to add 12 sections that will designate 12 product categories composed of intermediate ingredient and feedstock materials within which biobased products would be afforded procurement preference by Federal agencies and their contractors. USDA is also proposing minimum biobased contents for each of these product categories. Comments are due by March 14.
The State Department requests comments from the public by March 14 regarding recent revisions to Category XII of the United States Munitions List (USML). In light of the ongoing transition of the USML to a more "positive list" pursuant to the President’s Export Control Reform initiative, the Department requests that the public comment on (1) alternatives to controls on certain items when "specially designed for a military end user," (2) the scope of the control in paragraph (b)(1), and (3) certain technical parameters that the Department is evaluating to replace "specially designed" controls.
January 11 In Munilla Construction Management, LLC, the Court of Federal Claims denied the protester's request for a TRO because: (i) it might lack standing since it was not next-in-line for award; and (ii) it did not show irreparable harm because, inter alia, the court had established an aggressive schedule for full consideration of its protest.
January 10 In Astro Systems, Inc., the ASBCA held that the contract did not require the Government to pay the lessor profit on the cost to repair damage to leased vehicles caused by government personnel.
In Sparton DeLeon Springs, LLC, the ASBCA held that the Contracting Officer's decision demanding reimbursement of direct costs was a government claim and was time-barred because it was issued more than six years after the Government knew or should have known of the claim. Subsequently, the Board denied the Government's motion for reconsideration.
Effective January 15, the State Department is issuing a final rule revising Category XV (Spacecraft and Related Articles) of the U.S. Munitions List to describe more precisely the articles warranting control in that category. The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security is making corresponding changes to the Commodity Control List.
January 6 In RQ Squared, LLC, after permitting limited discovery, the Court of Federal Claims granted the Government's renewed motion for summary judgment and dismissed the plaintiff's suit for breach of an alleged implied-in-fact contract (under which the Postal Service was allegedly to protect plaintiff's proprietary information from disclosure and use) because, inter alia: (i) the court could not discern from the plaintiff's pleadings and submissions exactly what proprietary information the Postal Service allegedly misappropriated; (ii) the Postal Service was using the disputed technology before the plaintiff disclosed it to the Postal Service; and (iii) UPS developed certain disputed technology independently without unauthorized disclosure from the Postal Service.
January 5 In a case that I would bet originated with some overly zealous DCAA auditor, the ASBCA spanked the Government and simply dismissed two government claims out of hand in Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems, Inc., reasoning that: (i) the Government's attempt to disallow certain subcontract costs was based only on vague, conclusory assist audit reports on subcontractors and did not establish any logical liability on the part of the prime; and (ii) the Government's claim that the prime contractor breached some duty to the Government by failing to monitor its subcontractors adequately to avoid billing the Government for certain subcontractor costs questioned in various assist audits did not even allege several of the elements required to establish a breach.
January 4 In Strategic Business Solutions, Inc., an unsuccessful preaward protest, the Court of Federal Claims held that the procuring agency did not err in rejecting a proposal for failure to comply with a mandatory solicitation requirement to provide a redacted copy of its proposal because the failure was not a minor informality or irregularity that could be waived.
In Parcel 49C Limited Partnership, another unsuccessful preaward protest, the court held that: (i) the procuring agency had twice investigated allegations of an organizational conflict of interest involving the protester's competitor and had properly found that any conflict, even if it existed, had been mitigated; (ii) the challenged firm had committed to meet the solicitation's single-owner requirement if awarded the contract, which was all the solicitation required of it; and (iii) the solicitation's requirements were necessary to meet the agency's minimum needs and, therefore, were not unduly restrictive of competition.
January 3 GSAR Case 2016-G508: The GSA is amending the General Services Administration Acquisition Regulation (GSAR) (i) to remove the section regarding internal procedures used by GSA personnel to monitor contractual actions entered into the Federal Procurement Data System and (ii) to add a nonregulatory section in the General Services Acquisition Manual (GSAM) covering this subject.
The Department of State has amended the ITAR to enable U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to implement the International Trade Data System (ITDS), which will allow businesses to electronically submit the data required to import or export cargo, as provided by Executive Order 13659 and the Security and Accountability for Every Port Act of 2006 (SAFE Port Act).
January 2 In Meridian Engineering Co., the Court of Federal Claims held that, because the Government's actions, including suspending the work, were addressable under the Suspension of Work and Changes clauses, the contractor was entitled only to an equitable adjustment, not breach damages, and the court then made extensive factual findings and legal conclusions concerning various specific elements of the claimed equitable adjustment, e.g., home office overhead, interest, and tool costs.
January 1, 2017 Happy New Year! Today marks the start of this site's eleventh year. Time flies when regardless whether you're having fun.
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