Redstone Government Consulting Blog | Redstone GCI (5)

Since the last wave in 2012, mostly brought on by a fear of tax changes, we haven’t seen a lot of activity with small business M&A.  Many 50m to 500m government contractors went the way of the ESOP during the last decade.  These entities, and small businesses in general have enjoyed organic growth during the past 5 years as more and more procurements came out for small businesses.  The ESOP’s are sitting on a pile of cash and the shareholders are clamoring for more net income/increased share values.  As these companies blow through their NAICS codes, their appetite for growth is steering them in an M&A direction.

As we approach Halloween and the night of tricks or treats, we’ve done some exhaustive research (more accurately hypothesizing) as to the trending costumes (favored by DCAA or DCMA). Some of the favorites:

Over the past few months Redstone GCI has made several significant investments in our software services practice. For many years we have supported our clients with Deltek solutions, as well as many of our small business clients with QuickBooks assistance. In July, we added a new staff member to our ranks to better support our Deltek clients. Jimmy Baker will be leading our Costpoint and GCS support services, and we are excited to introduce him to our existing clients. Jimmy has been working with Costpoint for over 20 years decades, and has a great deal of experience working with larger system implementations, as well as new implementation and design for smaller companies utilizing Costpoint. He most recently assisted a very large government contractor with worldwide integration and conversion to Deltek Costpoint.

On June 18, 2015, as a retired “civil servant” whose personnel records now reside with OPM, I was notified by OPM that OPM had “recently become aware of a cybersecurity incident that may have exposed my personal information”.

On April 30, 2015, a US District Court Judge in Delaware granted a United States motion to dismiss an FTCA claim (Federal Torts Claim Act) filed by KBRS (Kellogg Brown and Root Services).   The government’s motion to dismiss was premised upon jurisdictional issues; in particular discretionary functions on the part of a government official are exemptions to the FTCA.   The litigation involved a two count complaint by KBRS; i) damages arising from a negligent DCAA audit and ii) damages caused by the negligent DCAA audit resulting in a Department of Justice investigation under the False Claims Act.   Although the litigation involved a number of other issues (in addition to the allegedly negligent DCAA audit report), none of those issues were debated once the District Court determined that it did not have jurisdiction over actions exempt from the FTCA.

In honor of today’s date and what it represents, a special blog concerning government actions and reactions.

Although it may come as a surprise to many, DCAA (Defense Contract Audit Agency) has embraced the concept of New Years’ Resolutions, in this case to restate and to reinforce strategic goals in terms of near term objectives.  It should be recognized that DCAA’s New Year actually began on October 1, 2014; however, DCAA is only now managing to complete its new years’ resolutions which is coincidentally reinforcing the need for resolution #1. 

Here are DCAA’s top five New Years’ Resolutions for 2015:

Although we once again failed to receive an invitation to attend the Federal Government’s Annual Halloween Ball, we have it from a reliable source that the following were the top four costumes for Government Officials and/or Agencies.  In addition, we’ve identified the most likely reasons for the popularity of the top four costumes.

Recently DCAA’s Director, Pat Fitzgerald, announced his retirement effective August 4, 2014.  In addition to announcing his retirement, he very graciously thanked the DCAA community for their collective efforts to “clearly improve our audit quality and workforce morale, as well as the value we are adding to the warfighter and taxpayer”.   In addition, Mr. Fitzgerald assured the DCAA workforce that “we have established a foundation to make additional improvements to ensure that we continue to provide exceptional service”.