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GAO Teaches Course in Cost Realism 101

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 06.06.07

In Magellan Health Services (Jan. 5, 2007, http://www.gao.gov/decisions/bidpro/298912.pdf), GAO sustained a protest of HHS's award of a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for employee assistance program services when the agency's cost realism evaluation was unreasonable for several reasons, including a failure to account for insufficient levels of effort and labor rates in the awardee's cost proposal. After chiding the agency for not adjusting the awardee's cost proposal in accordance with the recommendations of the agency's own cost analyst, GAO found the adjusted costs were still lower than the protestor's but the smaller delta required the agency to take another look at its unsupported conclusion that the offerors were "technically equal."

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Client Alert | 1 min read | 07.08.26

CAS Board Publishes Final Rule Rescinding CAS 404, 408, 409, and 4117

As part of its ongoing effort to conform the Cost Accounting Standards (“CAS”) to generally accepted accounting principles (“GAAP”), the CAS Board published a final rule rescinding CAS 408 (Accounting for costs of compensated personal absence) and CAS 411 (Accounting for acquisition costs of material).  The CAS Board also rescinded CAS 404 (Capitalization of tangible assets) and CAS 409 (Depreciation of tangible capital assets) but retained certain requirements of CAS 404 and 409, which will be located in new paragraphs of CAS 405 (Accounting for unallowable costs).  Specifically, the CAS Board retained the requirements currently located at CAS 404-50(d)(1), CAS 409-50(e)(5), CAS 409-50(j)(1), and CAS 409-50(j)(4), which the CAS Board explained are necessary to protect the Government’s interests.  Otherwise, the CAS Board determined that the requirements of CAS 404, 408, 409, and 411 overlapped with GAAP such that GAAP “may be applied reasonably as a substitute for CAS to support contract cost and pricing.”...

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