Punctual people often live by the maxim: “If you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late.” When submitting electronic proposals under FAR 52.212-1, those are words to live by. Even if you submit your electronic proposal on time, and even if it reaches government servers before the proposal deadline, it might still be considered late if it gets caught in the agency’s spam folder or email quarantine.
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,
As most federal contractors know, the standard FAR clauses grant the government the right to default a contractor for delay. These same clauses, however, protect contractors where the delay is “excusable” and involve “unforeseeable causes beyond the control and without the fault or negligence of the Contractor.” Examples listed in the clauses include, among other
Now that we are two years into the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, it should come as no surprise that several cases discussing whether COVID-19 is an excusable delay have made their way through the ASBCA and CBCA dockets. These cases show that although COVID-19 may be treated as an “epidemic” under the right circumstances according to the enumerated excusable delays in the FAR, the boards have no intention of treating the pandemic as a cure-all for contractors facing potential terminations for default.
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.
The Court of Federal Claims (CoFC) recently held that an offeror was not obligated to inform the agency of staffing changes, affecting its key personnel, that occurred following its proposal submission. This new CoFC decision conflicts with longstanding GAO precedent.
Key personnel are often a significant part of proposals and can greatly increase or diminish
On February 4, 2022, President Biden issued Executive Order 14063, requiring certain federal construction contractors and subcontractors “to negotiate or become party to a project labor agreement with one or more appropriate labor organizations.”
The EO’s Project Labor Agreement (PLA) requirement applies to “large-scale construction projects,” defined to include domestic federal construction projects “for which the total estimated cost of the construction contract to the Federal Government is $35 million or more,” subject to adjustment based on inflation.
When Congress enacted the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 in December 2019, Congress included the Fair Chance to Compete for Jobs Act of 2019 (the Act). The Act, in relevant part, restricts federal contractors from requesting criminal history information from certain job applicants until after the applicant has received a conditional offer
In June 2007, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that a party who fails to object to patent errors in a solicitation before the conclusion of the bidding process waives those objections. Blue & Gold Fleet, L.P. v. United States, 492 F.3d 1308 (Fed. Cir. 2007). Commonly, referred to as Blue & Gold, this decision warned contractors that challenges to the terms of a solicitation must be brought early or risk being lost forever. Blue & Gold was further solidified in 2015 in Bannum. Bannum held that “mere notice of dissatisfaction or objection is insufficient to preserve [a] defective-solicitation challenge.” Bannum, Inc. v. United States, 779 F.3d 1376 (Fed. Cir. 2015). In Bannum the protester’s failure to formally protest the solicitation resulted in a waiver of those challenges. Id. The court indicated that a formal challenge would have likely preserved the protester’s post-award challenges, Id., but this was not solidified until now.
On December 7, 2021, the U.S. District for the Southern District of Georgia, in Georgia v. Biden, No. 1:21-cv-163, granted a preliminary injunction that temporarily stayed the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal contractors and subcontractors “in any state or territory of the United States of America.” The case was initially brought by Georgia, Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia. The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), a national trade organization, intervened on the side of the plaintiffs. The seven states and ABC requested a preliminary injunction staying Executive Order (EO) 14042 and associated FAR clauses and Guidance, which require federal contractors and subcontractors to have their employees provide proof of vaccination in order to work on or in connection with federal contracts and also impose mask and social distancing requirements. The court granted the preliminary injunction and stayed the federal contractor vaccine mandate nationwide.