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Adam Bartolanzo

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Adam Bartolanzo is an associate in the Governmental Practice in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office.

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On November 27, 2018, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) released its Bid Protest Annual Report to Congress for Fiscal Year 2018.

Under the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984 (“CICA”), GAO is required to report annually to Congress on each instance in which (1) a federal agency did not fully implement a recommendation made by GAO in connection with a bid protest decision, or (2) a final decision in a protest was not rendered within 100 days after the date the protest was submitted to the Comptroller General, during the prior fiscal year. GAO reported no such instances for Fiscal Year 2018.
Continue Reading GAO Annual Report On Bid Protests: 2018 Yields More Protests, More Merit Decisions, But Fewer Sustains and Fewer Hearings

On June 12, 2018, the Department of Defense (“DoD”), the General Services Administration, and NASA proposed a new rule that would limit the “adequate price competition” exception to certified cost or pricing data requirements on all DoD, NASA, and Coast Guard procurements. Currently, FAR 15.403-1 prohibits contracting officers from requiring contractors to submit certified cost or pricing data to support a contract action when the contracting officer determines that the prices agreed upon are based on “adequate price competition,” which the regulation defines in one of three ways:…
Continue Reading Proposed Rule Would Create a Separate, More Restrictive Standard for “Adequate Price Competition” for the DoD, NASA, and the Coast Guard

The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA” or “Act”) includes changes that could make the Department of Defense (“DoD”) a more effective and knowledgeable purchaser of Intellectual Property (“IP”) and promote more flexible IP acquisition strategies. These same changes also could encourage Contracting Officers to insist on broader IP rights and delivery requirements. While it has always been important for contractors to protect their IP (click here for our list of “Top 10 Ways to Lose Rights in Your IP”), with the passage of the 2018 NDAA, avoiding the loss of valuable IP rights could require even more sophistication and vigilance.
Continue Reading Contractors Beware: The 2018 NDAA Ushers In New Changes Affecting IP Rights

Auditing by the Defense Contract Audit Agency (“DCAA”) is a ubiquitous cost of doing business with the Department of Defense, and one which many defense contractors have come to dread. Unfortunately, far too often the DCAA’s audit reports rely upon faulty evidence and/or unreasonable interpretations that ignore the plain language of contracts, procurement regulations, and existing decisional law. When this happens, contractors typically have no choice but to engage in the costly process of challenging the audit findings and, when contracting officers lack the will to butt heads with the DCAA, to pursue litigation (and incur unallowable costs) to obtain relief from noncompliance determinations that never should have issued in the first place.
Continue Reading Clearly Erroneous Audit Assertion – An Expensive Thorn in Contractors’ Sides

Note: This post was originally published in the October 2017 issue of the National Defense Industrial Association’s National Defense magazine.

Recent studies show that the percentage of overall research and development spending sponsored by the government has dropped sharply over the last 50 years.

Whereas government funding accounted for 67 percent of R&D in 1964, it accounted for 23 percent in 2015, a 44 percent reduction. For the government, this is not a salutary development. Increasingly, “state of the art” is being defined by the commercial marketplace, without government participation and often without its access to the resulting technological advances.
Continue Reading Industry Struggles With Ever Changing Acquisition Rules

On March 27, 2017, President Donald Trump signed into law a Congressional Review Act (“CRA”) resolution repealing the so-called “blacklisting” rule, which would have imposed strict labor reporting and other requirements upon government contractors. This was followed by an Executive Order (“EO”) signed by President Trump the same day, effectively nullifying President Barack Obama’s Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces EO that first called for the blacklisting rule.
Continue Reading UPDATE: Congress and Trump Administration Repeal “Blacklisting” Rule, Relieving Contractors from Strict Labor Reporting and Other Requirements

Section 820 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 (“NDAA”) establishes a new Defense Cost Accounting Standards Board (“D-CASB”) to oversee the application of the Cost Accounting Standards (“CAS”) to defense contracts. The amendments made by Section 820 shall take effect on October 1, 2018.
Continue Reading Defense Contractors to Face New Cost Accounting Oversight with Creation of Defense Cost Accounting Standards Board