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Limitation on Mark-Up of Subcontractor Costs

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 04.30.07

In an interim rule effective immediately, the Defense Department amended DFARS on April 26, 2007 to permit the Government to "disallow" (including on firm-fixed price contracts) "excessive pass through charges" on subcontracts where the total subcontract costs exceeds 70 percent of the contract value. "Excessive" charges are defined to include costs and profit that the contractor cannot demonstrate to the contracting officer add something other than "no or negligible" substantive value to performance, so any contractor with an accounting practice that allocates G&A to subcontract costs could run afoul of these rules.

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Client Alert | 4 min read | 10.30.26

Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right: GAO Sustains Protest Where Agency Tried to Fix PIA Violation with a Second PIA Violation

Recent sustain decisions by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in Fluor Federal Solutions, LLC and Reliance Test & Technology send a clear message: when an agency tries to fix a Procurement Integrity Act (PIA) violation by committing a second one, the cure can be just as fatal as the disease. The cases involved the U.S. Air Force’s $1.8 billion procurement for O&M services at Elgin Air Force Base. During discussions, the Air Force inadvertently released a pricing overview slide with all offerors’ bottom-line evaluated costs to Reliance Test & Technology, which immediately notified the agency of the error. In response, the Air Force decided to level the playing field by providing the same information to all the other offerors in the procurement, stating, “[o]fferors may consider this disclosure in their [final proposal revision].”...