CBCA 6760

GRANTED IN PART: December 22, 2022 CBCA 6760 WU & ASSOCIATES, INC., Appellant, v. GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION, Respondent. Sean T. O’Meara of Archer & Greiner, P.C., Voorhees, NJ, counsel for Appellant. Jay Bernstein, Office of General Counsel, General Services Administration, Washington, DC, counsel for Respondent. Before Board Judges RUSSELL, SULLIVAN, and CHADWICK. RUSSELL, Board Judge. In a previous decision, the Board granted Wu & Associates, Inc.’s (Wu) motion for partial summary judgment on entitlement upon finding that the specification at issue was defective because using skids to strengthen flooring at a federal building to support the weight of heavy elevator equipment was infeasible and that Wu relied on this defective specification. Wu & Associates, Inc. v. General Services Administration, CBCA 6760, 21-1 BCA ¶ 37,965. Following the Board’s decision, Wu and the General Services Administration (GSA) agreed to brief the issue of quantum on the written record under Board Rule 19, 48 CFR 6101.19 (2021), and the Board issued scheduling orders consistent with the CBCA 6760 2 parties’ agreement.1 After reviewing the record, we find that Wu has established entitlement to some of its costs. Background In December 2018, during a site visit shortly after contract award, Wu determined that the existing raised floor on the seventeenth floor of the Ted Weiss Federal Building in New York City could not support the weight of heavy elevator equipment. Wu submitted a change order request proposing to correct, protect, and strengthen the floor. The proposal involved Hi Tech Data Floors, Inc. (Hi Tech), the original floor installer, removing the existing flooring, which the change order request alleged was damaged, installing support pedals, and adding an underlayment and new flooring. In March 2019, Wu notified GSA that it would submit further information in support of the change order request. In April 2019, Wu provided GSA a report prepared by William J. Madden (Mr. Madden), a professional engineer, in which he concluded that the existing floor could not support the load of the elevator equipment by only distributing the load. GSA, GSA’s project manager, Wu, and KONE Elevators (KONE), the elevator installer, continued to discuss the engineering needed to address the limited load capacity of the floor. Wu submitted a formal proposal in early May 2019 with options to safely move the elevator equipment, including the use of an elevator shaft to hoist the equipment up to the machine room which Wu determined would be the most effective option. Relying upon Mr. Madden’s opinion, Wu noted that using skids over the floor to distribute the equipment load, as required by GSA in the contract, would not work. GSA informed Wu that the agency had no objection to Wu’s proposal, but it asked for additional technical details. In response, Wu provided a detailed analysis prepared by Innova Technologies, Inc. (Innova). Innova proposed the use of an “Air Sled” system to move the elevator equipment over the raised floor with a customized skid. Innova rejected the proposal to add more stanchions because that solution might not be feasible since the space under the floor was already being used for wiring. Innova also noted the possibility that the stanchions might fail without a full understanding of the internal forces of the proprietary floor panel system, and the process involving the installation of stanchions was labor-intensive. At a meeting in June 2019, GSA raised questions about the “Air Sled” system proposal and instructed Wu to, again, look into the possibility to reinforce the raised flooring panels with more stanchions. 1 See American Agri-Business Insurance Co., CBCA 4708-FCIC, 16-1 BCA ¶ 36,303, at 177,028 n.1 (treating the parties’ motions for summary relief as submissions of the case on the record consistent with the prior expressed intent of the parties and the Board’s order.). CBCA 6760 3 GSA also asked Wu to provide a more scientific and engineering analysis on the raised flooring and a scientific and detailed analysis on the “Air Sled” system solution. In September 2019, KONE, with PSP Enterprises, Inc. (PSP), an engineering company, revisited the solution of reinforcing the raised floor.