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Brian Waagner

Brian is the leader of the Government Contracts practice group at Husch Blackwell LLP. Brian represents contractors in federal, state, and local bid protests, contract administration and compliance matters, and in litigation involving complex claims and disputes.

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For over 60 years, the Small Business Administration has celebrated Small Business Week to highlight the contributions of small and medium-sized businesses to the national economy. The Trump Administration marked this year’s Small Business Week celebration with a proclamation noting the benefits of its public policy initiatives, especially those pertaining to tariffs and deregulation. The proclamation, issued on May 5, 2025, promises that small businesses will benefit directly from the Trump Administration’s policy initiatives, which will result in increased access to capital, improved opportunities for public and private investment, and assistance exporting products on a global scale.

In this post, we look at current policy initiatives aimed directly at improving opportunities for small business contractors. 

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In a separate post, we discuss how President Trump’s Executive Order (EO) 14240 (Mar. 20, 2025) will affect federal purchasing of information technology.

EO 14240 may also change how the federal government buys billions of dollars in other “common goods and services”, a phrase that include nearly everything the Government buys from private industry. The Order defines “common goods and services” as the “common Government-wide categories defined by the “Category Management Leadership Council led by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).” It includes construction, technical and engineering services, logistics, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals.

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President Trump’s Executive Order (EO) 14240 (Mar. 20, 2025) provides for the General Services Administration (GSA) Administrator to assume responsibility for all Government-wide contracts for the acquisition of information technology and to develop a plan to consolidate purchasing of many other goods and services within GSA.

In this post, we discuss the impacts of EO 14240 on federal IT purchasing. We look at how EO 14240 will affect purchasing of common goods and services in a separate post.

Judge's gavel on table in office

The qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act allow individuals to file suit on behalf of the United States and to receive a share of the resulting financial settlement or judgment. Filing a qui tam case is not just a formal means of advising the Government of presenting a whistleblower complaint. Even when the Government chooses not to participate in a qui tam case, the False Claims Act itself gives the individual plaintiff authority to pursue it on their own.

Section 822 of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, Public Law No. 117-7776 (Dec. 23, 2022) provides new authority for some defense contractors and subcontractors to obtain price increases that address the impacts of inflation. The new authority is welcome relief for contractors and subcontractors holding fixed-price defense contracts, which typically do not allow a price increase due solely to inflation.

Contractors and contracting officers are often asked to make tough decisions about issues that arise in the course of a complex government contract. Decisions that change the scope of work, the schedule, or the cost of the work must be documented so that the work can proceed. In a perfect world, the parties would execute a bilateral contract modification that addresses and resolves any potential future disputes.

Contractors are well aware that they cannot rely on the apparent authority of government officials. Under Federal Crop Ins. Corp. v. Merrill, 332 U.S. 380 (1947), only an authorized contracting officer may bind the government. But what about the apparent authority of contractor representatives? That was the question presented for consideration in Aspen Consulting, …

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The ASBCA’s November 2021 decision in Harry Pepper and Associates, Inc., No. 62038 et al. (Nov. 3, 2021) offers important guidance on the role of live witness testimony in one of the most challenging aspects of differing site conditions claims: proving that the actual site conditions were actually different from those that were expected.

The claims at issue in the case arose from a $36 million task order for the restoration of NASA’s B-2 rocket test stand, which was built in the 1960s as part of the Apollo program and used to test the Saturn V rockets. The restoration was needed so that the B-2 stand can be used to test rocket vehicles for use in NASA’s new moon-launch program, Artemis.