In January, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (“NDAA”), which includes numerous new procurement policies directed at contractors and how they bid on and perform government contracts.
To learn more about this, click here to read the client alert.
On January 29, 2013, a final rule was issued prohibiting the award of contracts to inverted domestic corporations. The final rule requires an offeror to represent that it is not an inverted domestic corporation and creates potential liability if the contractor’s legal status changes after the contract is awarded.
To learn more about this, click here to read the client alert that was written by John Jensen and Evan Wesser.
On January 14, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“Federal Circuit”) held that an offeror had standing to challenge the exclusion of its proposal from a competition even prior to a competitive range, despite the offeror’s submission of an incomplete proposal. In Orion Technology, Inc. v. United States, the Federal Circuit clarified that a disappointed offeror that has been eliminated from a competition can show that it has standing as an “interested party.”
To learn more about this, click here to read the client alert that was written by Daniel Herzfeld and Evan Wesser.
On December 7, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its first decision determining that government contractors need to challenge any obvious errors, improprieties, or ambiguities on the face of a solicitation amendment before award (extending its previous rule that such challenges to the initial solicitation generally must be challenged before award). In COMINT Systems Corp. & Eyeit.com, Inc., JV v. United States, the Federal Circuit found that Comint missed an opportunity to challenge an obvious – or patent – error in an amendment to the solicitation. By signing the amendment and waiting until after award to protest the allegedly problematic amendment, the government contractor waived any right to challenge the terms of the amendment to the solicitation.
To learn more about this, click here to read the client alert that was written by Daniel Herzfeld.
When we posted yesterday about the RFP for the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement, we perhaps missed the most important aspect of the Instructions to Bidders: No Obligation to Award. (It’s on page 40, for those keeping track.) Usually this sort of provision is a safety valve. Here, it might be more. The owner apparently still doesn’t know where the money will come from. Bloomberg is reporting that a bill is working its way through the New York Legislature to allow Public Private Partnership funding for . . . the Tappan Zee Bridge Replacement.
“In” and “out” of New York City that is. Roosevelt Island, in particular. Stanford withdrew its proposal to build a campus on New York City’s Roosevelt Island and a week later, the City agreed to provide 10 acres to Cornell plus $100 million in infrastructure improvements; Cornell will build a $2 Billion campus on that property. You can read Mayor Bloomberg’s quotes about it on Mayor Bloomberg’s company’s website here. (Surely there’s an antitrust violation somewhere in there.)
New Yorkers hope that the project will keep high tech software from fleeing to the suburbs. Bloomberg (the site — not the mayor) quotes the president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation as saying, “Software and applications need the kind of dense expertise that cities are full of.” If Pinsky is right, maybe Roosevelt Island will be the next Silicon Valley.
Cornell hired Skidmore, Owings & Merrell to design the project and it’s estimated that it will generate 20,000 construction jobs. It’s a bit early to say who the lucky 20,000 workers will be — or who their employer will be. Stay tuned.
Chances are, you get your water from a public drinking water system, even though approximately two thirds of drinking water systems in this country are non-community systems — think campgrounds and schools. And the chances are that the system that provides your water needs an upgrade. The American Society of Civil Engineers has produced the second in a series of reports grading America’s infrastructure and has given the United States a grade of “D” for its water systems. You can see an executive summary of the report here and you’ll be able to download the entire report when it is released on December 16 at the ASCE’s website.
The water systems graded include systems for drinking water, and also water for industrial processes sewage systems. The report highlights the need for major investments in our country’s water systems infrastructure and the numbers are staggering. In 2010, the country needed to spend $91 Billion but only spent $36 Billion. That gap is expected to get worse, rising to $84 Billion in 2020 and then $143 Billion in 2040.
Good thing we have lots of extra tax dollars to spend. Oh wait. We don’t. Maybe PPP’s are the solution.
If you answered “yes” but only because the title conjured up images of late nights in a small room with 11 other jurors of your peers…there is another type of “sequestration” that might be of concern to you.
The more noteworthy sequestration is the automatic budget cuts that were triggered on November 23, 2011, when the Government’s “Super Committee” failed to agree on a means of reducing the Nation’s defict. The Budget Control Act of 2011 mandates that federal spending be decreased by $109.3 billion per year over ten years, resulting in a total federal spending decrease of $1.2 trillion by 2023. Although this sequestration has already been triggered, it remains to be seen exactly how much this will effect spending on federal construction projects.
It is probably not worth panicking just yet since the cuts will not go into effect until 2013 – and the automatic cuts are a relatively small percentage of overall federal spending. Nevertheless, this is a sequestration you should keep on your radar, just like the AGC is.
Gravel2Gavel Construction & Real Estate Law Blog