LOGCAP III – KBR – Ms Sparky

LOGCAP III – KBR Archive

Lawyer: Military’s housing choice irrelevant

By Ms Sparky | Filed in A Soldiers Story, Electrocutions/Shocks, GOV. CONTRACTORS, KBR Contract, LAWSUITS, Lawsuits Against KBR, LOGCAP III - KBR, Ryan Maseth-US Army

Brian Bowling – (TribLive News) – May 14, 2013 – A federal jury can determine whether a Defense contractor is responsible for the electrocution death of a Shaler soldier without second-guessing the military’s choice of where to house troops in Iraq, a lawyer for the soldier’s parents argued Tuesday.

The jury doesn’t have to decide whether the Army made the right choice in housing Sgt. Ryan Maseth, 24, in a building with a substandard electrical system to determine whether KBR Inc. of Houston had the discretion to fix the water pump that electrocuted Maseth while he was taking a shower, said William Stickman.

If the jury decides the Army tied KBR’s hands, “we simply lose,” he told a three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which was hearing oral arguments in the Downtown federal courthouse.

Cheryl Harris of Cranberry and Douglas Maseth of Allison Park want the appeals court to reinstate their lawsuit against KBR Inc. for the Jan. 2, 2008, death of their son at the Radwaniyah Palace Complex in Iraq.

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Tags: Cheryl Harris, Electrocutions/Shocks, Judge Nora Barry Fischer, KBR, Lawrence Ebner, Lawrence S. Ebner, SSG Ryan Maseth, William Stickman

KBR vs. Army: On largest services contract, ‘things have gotten very nasty’

By Forseti | Filed in GOV. CONTRACTORS, KBR Files Suit, LAWSUITS, LOGCAP III - KBR

Jim McElhatton – (Federal Times) – May 5, 2013 – Army contracting officer Robert Egan gave contractor KBR Inc. a rare ultimatum: Provide a firm, fixed price on remaining work to close out the largest government services contract in U.S. history. Or else, he added, he was finished talking.

“Until I see that FFP deliverable, I cannot enter further communication exchanges with your contracts team,” Egan told the company in a Feb. 26 email.

At issue is the final stage of the Army’s $38 billion Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) III, the 12-year-old logistics contract that has supported virtually all U.S. military logistics operations in Iraq. The Army seeks to revise the pricing terms on the final work to be done on the contract to be firm, fixed price instead of cost-reimbursable. In response, KBR has filed a lawsuit seeking to keep to the existing cost-reimbursable terms.

At stake in the dispute is far more than varying interpretations of contracting procedures. By its own estimates, KBR says the closeout work on the contract will cost more than $500 Read the remainder of this entry »

Tags: Charles Tiefer, Commission on Wartime Contracting, GAO, Iraq, KBR, LOGCAP III, Mary Wade, R.W. Nicholson, Robert Egan

Neil Gordon: Army of One … Contractor

By Forseti | Filed in GOV. CONTRACTORS, LOGCAP III - KBR

Neil Gordon – (POGO) – January 11, 2013 – Mark Thompson posted an interesting federal contracting-related tidbit Tuesday on TIME’s national security blog, Battleland. He looked at a list of recent Department of Defense contract awards and noticed that many of them had received only one bid.

Of the 35 contracts in the list that Thompson reviewed, 20 of them, worth a combined $257 million, either solicited or received just a single bid. On many of them, including contracts awarded to big players such as Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), General Dynamics, Raytheon, and BAE Systems , the government solicited only one bid. Federal agencies are required to award contracts on the basis of full and open competition but are permitted to award non-competitive contracts in certain situations. The U.S. Army awarded 19 of the 20 contracts, which makes us wonder if the Army is perhaps taking its old “Army of One” slogan a bit too literally when it comes to contracting.

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Tags: BAE Systems, Computer Sciences Corp.(CSC), DoD Contractors, DoD*, General Dynamics, KBR, Neil Gordon, Raytheon

KBR November Litigation Round-Up

By Ms Sparky | Filed in CHEMICAL AND OTHER EXPOSURES, Civilian Contractors, GOV. CONTRACTORS, Indictments, Convictions & Arrests, KBR, KBR Contract, KBR Investigations, LAWSUITS, Lawsuits Against KBR, LOGCAP III - KBR, Politics, Qarmat Ali Lawsuits, Qui Tam, Reports & Investigations, RIO-KBR, Sodium Dichromate @ Qarmat Ali

NEIL GORDON – (POGO) – November 26, 2012 – November has been a very bad month for defense contractor KBR.

KBR is the federal government’s primary logistics support contractor in Iraq, receiving tens of billions of dollars in business from the Department of Defense over the last decade, much of that under the U.S. Army’s monopolistic Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) III contract.

In early November, an Oregon federal jury returned an $85.2 million verdict against KBR for exposing military personnel to toxic chemicals at an Iraqi water treatment facility in 2003. The jury found that KBR had “acted with reckless and outrageous indifference to a highly unreasonable risk of harm and conscious indifference to the health, safety, and welfare” of the plaintiffs. A case raising similar claims is pending in KBR’s hometown of Houston, Texas, and will soon go to trial.

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Tags: Anthony J. Martin, False Claims Act, First Kuwaiti, LOGCAP III, Neil Gordon, POGO, Qarmat Ali, USACE

US vs KBR again – will this one stick?

By Ms Sparky | Filed in GOV. CONTRACTORS, KBR, KBR Contract, KBR Investigations, LAWSUITS, Lawsuits Against KBR, LOGCAP III - KBR, Qui Tam

I wonder who comes up with this stuff?

United States Sues Houston-based KBR and Kuwaiti Subcontractor for False Claims on Contracts to House American Troops in Iraq

(DoJ) – November 19, 2012 – The government’s complaint arises from the Bed Down Mission, a push to replace the tents used to house soldiers during the early days of the war with trailers, also called living containers. KBR performed many of the services required under LOGCAP III, including the Bed Down Mission, through foreign and domestic subcontractors. According to the complaint, KBR awarded a subcontract to First Kuwaiti on Oct. 16, 2003, to supply, transport and install 2,252 living containers at Camp Anaconda in Iraq for about $80 million. The government alleges that First Kuwaiti was required to complete delivery and installation of the trailers at Camp Anaconda by Dec. 15, 2003. The government further alleges that in July 2004, First Kuwaiti presented two claims to KBR contending that government-caused delays in providing military escorts for convoys into Iraq entitled the company to an increase in the contract price to cover its increased costs. According to the complaint, KBR agreed to pay First Kuwaiti an additional $48.8 million and passed that cost on to the United States.

The government’s complaint alleges that First Kuwaiti knowingly inflated its crane and truck costs, among other items, and misrepresented the cause of its delays. The complaint further alleges that KBR charged these costs to the United States knowing they were improper.

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Tags: Camp Anaconda, Contract Disputes Act, False Claims Act, First Kuwaiti, Iraq, KBR, LOGCAP III