The System for Award Management (SAM) is the official website for registering to do business with the U.S. government, such as competing for federal procurement contracts. Under FAR 52.204-7, “an Offeror is required to be registered in SAM when submitting an offer or quotation, and shall be registered until time of award, during performance, and through final payment of any contract …resulting from the solicitation.” In the recent GAO protest of TLS Joint Venture, LLC (TLS), the awardee of a Navy contract for custodial services learned the hard way that maintaining active registration in SAM f ..read more

Construction law is a complex field that intersects with various other industries and legal fields, one being the maritime industry. In nearly twenty years of practicing construction law, I have often experienced the connection between these sophisticated areas of law and the implications of each on various projects, such as the construction of docks, breakwaters, piers, bridges, dredging and beach nourishment projects. In this blog post, we will explore the intricate relationship between these two legal realms by diving into a primer on maritime liens. Understanding the Connection Constructio ..read more

Sanford Federal, Inc., the selected awardee for a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA) contract, learned the hard way that a contractor simply cannot ignore a size protest, regardless of its actual merit. On August 8, 2023, the VA issued an RFQ for boiler plant safety device testing, calibration and inspection for one of its facilities in Arizona. The RFQ was set aside entirely for Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses and assigned NAICS code 238290, Other Building Equipment. The corresponding size standard for this code was $22 million in average annual receipts. The VA rece ..read more

In Steiner Construction Co., Inc., the Government Accountability Office (GAO) upheld the U.S. Coast Guard’s (USCG) award of a $1.19 billion small business set-aside shipbuilding contract to a business concern that was later determined to be other than a small business. The protestor argued that the Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Hearing and Appeals (OHA) decision to vacate an earlier SBA Area Office’s size determination that found the awardee to be an eligible small business concern required that the USCG terminate the award. On October 4, 2022, the SBA issued a size determinati ..read more

On December 26, 2023, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) published the much anticipated proposed rule for the revamped Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 2.0 Program. Following growing concerns within DoD that contractors were not consistently implementing the cybersecurity requirements of DFARS 252.204-2012, DoD responded with the creation of the CMMC Program in 2019 to move away from a “self-attestation” model of security. The CMMC Program’s purpose is for contractors and subcontractors to demonstrate that Federal Contract Information (FCI) and Controlled Unclassified Inform ..read more

On October 3, 2023, the FAR Council released two proposed rules for federal contractor cybersecurity requirements that relate to cyber threat and incident reporting and information sharing (case 2021-017) and standardizing cybersecurity requirements for unclassified federal information systems (case 2021-019). Both proposed rules not only provide new requirements for federal contractors to follow but also provide new definitions and contract provisions for information and contract technology and federal information systems contracts. Cyber Threat and Incident Reporting and Information Sharing ..read more

The Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals (ASBCA) recently issued a decision regarding a contractor’s claim for increased performance costs due to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Notable about this case is the contractor’s invocation of a July 2, 2020 Department of Defense (DoD) memorandum concerning the financial consequences on contractors with firm-fixed-price contracts lacking an economic price adjustment clause during “historic and unprecedented challenges” in the wake of the pandemic’s onset. In Ace Electronics Defense Systems, LLC (Ace), the Navy issued a delivery order ..read more

On August 19, 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) published a notice regarding a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) for all Type 2 Consolidated Employer Information Reports, Standard Form 100 (EEO-1 Report), filed by all federal contractors, including “first-tier subcontractors,” (covered contractors) from 2016-2020. The Type 2 EEO-1 report is one of several reports that multi-establishment employers must file annually. These reports consist of a consolidated report of demographic d ..read more

On July 14, 2022, the Department of Labor (DOL) issued a proposed rule that would require contractors and subcontractors performing covered service contracts to offer, in good faith, service employees employed under the predecessor contract the right of first refusal of employment under the successor contract. The proposed rule implements President Biden’s November 18, 2021 Executive Order 14055, Nondisplacement of Qualified Workers Under Service Contracts (the order). In sum, the order establishes a general policy for the federal government that “service contracts which succeed contracts for ..read more

In a recent Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals (ASBCA) decision, Pave-Tech, Inc., the ASBCA found that the decisions a construction contractor makes, even from the very beginning of a project, have consequences. In another recent article, we warned about signing contract modifications that contain release language which could thereafter preclude recovery of costs to which a contractor thought it was entitled later in a project. The decision in Pave-Tech reinforces the importance of considering all aspects of a contract from the onset of a project. One such decision a government contracto ..read more