It’s a well-known aspect of federal contracting: if a contractor wishes to formally dispute a matter of contract performance, the contractor should file a claim with the contracting officer.
But if the contractor is working under a task or delivery order, which contracting officer should be on the receiving end of that claim—the one responsible for the order, or the one responsible for the underlying contract?
As a recent Civilian Board of Contract Appeals decision demonstrates, when a contractor is performing work under a Federal Supply Schedule order, a claim involving the terms of the underlying Schedule contract must be filed with the GSA contracting officer.
Consultis of San Antonio, Inc. v. United States, CBCA No. 5458 (March 31, 2017) involved an appeal relating to a task order award by the VA to Consultis under its GSA Federal Supply Schedule Contract, for various information technology services. During performance, one of Consultis’ employees raised concerns about wage rates, so the Department of Labor conducted an inquiry to determine the applicability of the Service Contract Labor Standards under the task order. The DOL found that, while the Service Contract Act was incorporated in Consultis’ GSA Schedule contract, the appropriate wage determinations were not. It therefore recommended that GSA and VA add them to the task order.
Both GSA and the VA initially declined to add the wage determinations to the task order. Some six months later, however, the VA’s contracting officer issued a unilateral modification that did so. About two months after that, Consultis requested a supplemental payment from the VA as a result of these wage determinations, saying that it would pay the increased wages as soon as the VA provided the payment. After additional correspondence, the VA’s contracting officer issued a “final decision” denying Consultis’ request, noting that compliance with the labor standards is a contractor’s responsibility. GSA’s contracting officer apparently was involved in this decision.
Consultis appealed this denial to the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals. But after a review of the appeal, the Board questioned whether the VA contracting officer’s final decision was sufficient to trigger the Board’s jurisdiction.
Specifically, the Board noted that “FAR 8.406-6 requires that disputes pertaining to the terms and conditions of contracts be referred to the schedule contracting officer for resolution . . . whereas disputes pertaining to performance may be handled by the ordering activity contracting officer.” The Board found that this provision required GSA’s contracting officer—not the VA’s—to decide Consultis’ claim:
Although the focus of this appeal is the applicability of the wage determinations to the task order contract, the resolution of that issue necessarily requires an examination of the terms and conditions of the schedule contract. . . . We are not persuaded that clauses mandated by statute in the FSS contract, including those mandating compliance with the SCLS, cannot be enforced if they are not expressly incorporated into the task order contract. The task order comes into existence under the schedule contract. . . . Whether the VA contracting officer merely made explicit (by issuing the modification) what the contract already requires is an issue of contract interpretation that is appropriate for consideration by the GSA contracting officer. At the very least, it is a mixed issue, involving both performance and contract interpretation, which . . . also requires a decision from the GSA contracting officer.
Because GSA’s contracting officer did not issue final decision, the Board ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to consider Consultis’ appeal. It therefore dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
Though the principle that a contracting officer must first issue a final decision before a contractor may appeal that decision seems relatively straightforward, Consultis demonstrates that its real-world application is sometimes not. For disputes involving FSS contracts, contractors should consider which contracting officer—either the ordering agency’s or the GSA’s—should consider the claim; if the claim is not decided by the appropriate contracting officer, the Board will not have jurisdiction to consider any appeal.