CBCA 8268-C(7213

GRANTED IN PART: March 24, 2025 CBCA 8268-C(7213, 7393) ADAPT CONSULTING, LLC, Applicant, v. GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION, Respondent. Joseph A. Whitcomb of Whitcomb, Selinsky, P.C., Lakewood, CO, counsel for Applicant. Justin Hawkins and David C. Charin, Office of General Counsel, General Services Administration, Washington, DC, counsel for Respondent. Before Board Judges LESTER, ZISCHKAU, and SULLIVAN. ZISCHKAU, Board Judge. Applicant, Adapt Consulting, LLC, timely filed an application to recover attorney fees and related expenses under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), 5 U.S.C. § 504 (2018), after the Board granted its appeals in part. Adapt Consulting, LLC v. General Services Administration, CBCA 7213, et al., 24-1 BCA ¶ 38,625. Respondent, the General Services Administration (GSA or agency), opposes the application, arguing that its actions were reasonable and substantially justified. GSA additionally argues that the amount of fees Adapt seeks to recover is unreasonable. We grant Adapt’s application in part. CBCA 8268-C(7213, 7393) 2 Background The Initial Appeal and the Board’s Decision The Board presumes familiarity with the facts stated in our merits decision which we briefly summarize here. On September 14, 2021, Adapt appealed a partial termination for default in a contract to update approximately 110 physical access control systems in a building occupied by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). GSA issued a partial termination for default due to thirteen doors repeatedly receiving “fault/fault clear” (F/FC) messages in the enterprise security software maintained by EPA. Once EPA informed Adapt of the issue, Adapt made repeated efforts to investigate and remedy the situation. After almost seven months investigating and troubleshooting the issue, Adapt and its team determined that the F/FC messages were the result of environmental conditions outside of Adapt’s control and that operation of Adapt’s systems were functioning as designed. GSA was not satisfied with Adapt’s response and ultimately issued a partial termination for default of Adapt’s contract due to the F/FC issue being unresolved in thirteen doors. Adapt appealed the termination, and the case was docketed as CBCA 7213. On May 5, 2022, Adapt additionally appealed GSA’s denial of several affirmative monetary claims stemming from the same contract, docketed as CBCA 7393. Both appeals were consolidated. On July 22, 2024, we sustained Adapt’s challenge of the partial termination for default, concluding that GSA had failed to show that the termination for default was justified. Of the $220,870.85 sought by Adapt in its affirmative monetary claims, we granted recovery totaling $97,907.41 (claim A—$2,048.10, claim B—$17,460.31, claim C—$22,243.09 (in addition to the $46,484 GSA had already paid under claim C), and claim I—$56,155.91). We denied recovery for claims D, F, G, and H, primarily because Adapt had failed to provide sufficient records to support those claims. Adapt sought reconsideration of our denial of recovery for claim F, which we denied on August 23, 2024. Adapt Consulting, LLC v. General Services Administration, CBCA 7213-R, et al., 24-1 BCA ¶ 38,645, at 187,869. The decision became final on November 19, 2024. 41 U.S.C. § 7107 (2018). Adapt’s EAJA Application and GSA’s Opposition On November 25, 2024, Adapt submitted its petition under EAJA, seeking to recover $135,291.23, consisting of $128,237.50 in attorney fees and $7,053.73 in expenses. Adapt calculated its attorney fees by multiplying its counsels’ total hours, 1025.9 hours, by the EAJA statutory hourly rate limit of $125 per hour. 5 U.S.C. § 504(b)(1)(A). The expenses Adapt identified were incurred in the litigation of its appeals after the partial default termination. Adapt submitted three exhibits with its EAJA petition: (1) an affidavit confirming that the company employed less than 500 employees and its total assets were less CBCA 8268-C(7213, 7393) 3 than $7,000,000; (2) attorney time billing records beginning on October 7, 2021, with brief descriptions of the purpose for the charges and the billed amount; and (3) a list of expenses related to the litigation.