ASBCA 61099

ARMED SERVICES BOARD OF CONTRACT APPEALS Appeal of -- ) ) Sterling Design, Inc. ) ASBCA No. 61099 ) Under Contract No. FA8517-15-M-0018 ) APPEARANCE FOR THE APPELLANT: Mr. Richard L. Kessler President APPEARANCES FOR THE GOVERNMENT: Jeffrey P. Hildebrant, Esq. Air Force Deputy Chief Trial Attorney Lt Col Damund E. Williams, USAF Trial Attorney OPINION BY ADMINISTRATIVE JUDGE O'CONNELL Appellant, Sterling Design, Inc. (SDI) seeks $5,925 due to alleged government delay on an Air Force contract. SDI has elected the Board's Rule 12.3 accelerated procedure. Rule 12.3(c) provides that decisions under this rule will normally be short and contain only summary findings of fact and conclusions oflaw. For the reasons stated below, we deny the appeal. SUMMARY FINDINGS OF FACT SDI and the Air Force entered into a contract on 4 September 2015 in the amount of $7 ,395 for the repair of a power supply unit within 30 days of receipt of said unit at the contractor's facility (R4, tab 8 at 2). The contract provided that the "Contractor shall furnish all materials, parts and services necessary for the repair and calibration of the [power supply] in accordance with the attached Performance Work Statement (PWS) dated 30 March 2015" (R4, tab 7 at 2). The parties agree that the Air Force provided the unit to SDI in October 2015 (see app. br. at 2; gov't br. at 1), which would have required SDI to complete the repairs in November 2015. However, SDI did not return the unit to the Air Force until August 2016. (R4, tab 107 at 1) By emails on 23 and 28 August 2016, appellant, through its president, Richard Kessler, submitted a certified claim to the contracting officer seeking $5,925 for government delay; the claim included a listing of time entries, but provided no explanation of the underlying facts (R4, tab 4 ). The amount at issue consists of $4,800 (32 hours x $150) for Mr. Kessler, and $1,125 (9 hours x $125) for an outside consultant (id. at 5-6). Neither the claim nor SD I's brief identify the consultant or describe what he or she did or why these services were necessary. As for Mr. Kessler's time, the claim contains more than 70 terse entries from February to August (presumably in 2016), mostly in increments of 15 minutes. Examples (presented in reverse chronological order as in the claim) include the following: 8/ 17-18 sir shipping with central freight 1 hour Friday multiple phone calls 8/10 dk sterling design sent pco 15 minutes 7/14 dk sterling design to dcma qar 15 minutes 6/28 dk sterling design to aco 30 minutes 5/21 dk sterling design read outside contract consultant 15 minutes 4/28 dk sterling design to dcma qar 30 minutes 3/19 dk sterling design to pco 15 minutes (R4, tab 4 at 3-5) The contracting officer issued a final decision dated 21 December 2016 denying the claim. He concluded, among other things, that the "telephone conversations and emails listed in" the claim "are those that would be required for normal contract administration in order to comply with the terms and conditions of the repair order." (R4, tab 120) SDI has filed a Rule 4 supplement consisting of 893 pages of emails with government officials (in non-chronological order). SDI also filed a short opening brief with several pages of emails attached that we will assume convey the crux of its claim. SDI contends that the contract included five contract line item numbers (CLINs) that it had never seen in 30 years of business (app. hr. at 1). SDI states that Mr. Kessler wrote to a government official on 11 June 2015 (nearly three months before the contract award date) seeking clarification on, among other things, whether all of the CLINs needed to be included in the contract (app. hr. at 3). There is no response from the government in the record but appellant nonetheless entered into the contract. By email dated 27 October 2015, Mr. Kessler wrote to this same government official stating that SDI had completed the repair work but that it did not understand some CLINs or had never before filled out the reports required by the CLINs (id. at 3-4). There is no evidence in the record that the government ever responded to the email. SDI contends that it did not receive an answer from the contracting officer until 4 August 2016, resulting in months of delay to the contract (app. hr. at 1, 4). 2  In its 27 October 2015 email, Mr.