Suspension and debarment practice in 2017 is very different than it was just five or 10 years ago, and it continues to evolve.  Historically active programs, such as the Department of the Air Force, show few actions initiated in the last three months, while the Environmental Protection Agency has been heavily involved in excluding contractors and awardees.  Awareness of the current activity level and preferences of relevant agency suspension and debarment offices is one key to successfully managing your relationship with key federal agencies.  But successfully navigating the current suspension/debarment landscape is often more complicated than a single agency analysis.
Continue Reading Not Your Grandfather’s Suspension & Debarment: How Contractors Can Prepare For and Defend Against Today’s Exclusions

Join us today for our webinar Building a Border Wall: Opportunities, Contractual Risks, and Business Considerations. The Trump administration published two contract solicitations for the design-build of a “border wall” between the U.S. and Mexico. The RFPs (linked here and here) contemplate a multiple-award, multiple-phase approach for acquiring prototypes and, eventually, full construction.  

Changes in suspension and debarment data reported by the government can provide the American public with substantially more insight into the types of entities (and individuals) excluded through suspensions, proposed debarments, and debarments, including that the overwhelming majority of excluded companies are small businesses.  These changes likely show that more than 90 percent of the businesses excluded by the Department of Defense in Fiscal Year 2016 were small businesses. In this blog post we discuss the current counting method used by the government, and present a revised counting method using recently completed Fiscal Year 2016 exclusion statistics to understand the current state of the government’s suspension and debarment system in a more nuanced way.

Current Counting Method

The statistics reported by the Interagency Suspension and Debarment Committee (ISDC) in the annual ISDC Report cover only total numbers of suspensions, total proposed debarments, and total debarments.  This presentation could easily confuse readers because the aggregated data conceivably “triple counts” exclusions in a given year.  For example, a single individual or company may be suspended, proposed for debarment, and debarred in a given year and the ISDC Report would count that as three (3) separate actions.
Continue Reading State of Suspension/Debarment: FY2016 Statistics and the Impact on Small Businesses

The final year of the Obama Administration has seen a flurry of activity that will affect the government contracting community.  Appearing on WJLA’s Government Matters program (available here at govtmatters.tv), Crowell & Moring Chair Angela Styles discussed some of the latest changes that will impact industry including the GSA’s final rule on transactional

In the latest twist to the Administration’s roll-out of the new “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” rules, OIRA now identifies the rules as Economically Significant (a change from several days ago, discussed here), which means that the administration will have to provide a more detailed assessment of the likely benefits and costs of the

In a sign that the Obama Administration may be preparing to rush the publication of the FAR Council’s final rules implementing the “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” executive order in order to avoid timing problems associated with the Congressional Review Act, the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (responsible for reviewing the

On May 4, 2016, the FAR Council’s draft final rules and the Department of Labor’s draft final guidance implementing the “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” Executive Order arrived at the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for review, setting in motion the final steps prior to the issuance of burdensome new compliance

On February 25, the Obama Administration published a proposed rule implementing Executive Order 13706, Establishing Paid Sick Leave for Federal Contractors (previously discussed here). The proposed rule, which the Department of Labor estimates would impact 828,000 federal contractor employees (including approximately 436,700 employees who currently receive no paid sick leave and 391,400 employees who

The FY 2016 Omnibus Appropriations bill, passed on December 18, 2015, did not appropriate funds to establish an Office of Labor Compliance within the Department of Labor in order to implement the “Fair Play and Safe Workplaces” Executive Order, as requested by the Obama Administration. By declining to appropriate the requested funds, Congress pumped the

On Nov. 19, 2015, OMB released the fall 2015 regulatory agenda of regulations currently under development, listing April 2016 as the target for publication of the final rule implementing the “Fair Pay and Safe Work Places” executive order. The final rule, which is likely to be challenged in court by contractors and industry trade groups,