PREFACE
Because government contracting is one critical way the government gets its work done, a government manager may at any time be called upon to work with a contracting officer, contract specialist, or agency lawyer. A working knowledge of government contracts is therefore essential to carrying out your day-to-day as well as occasional responsibilities.
Typically, however, the government manager's understanding of contract law is limited. Simply put, "law" is not what the government manager "does."
Nor should it be. As a former federal attorney, I do not believe your role includes acting as the agency's lawyer. But you can be a more effective colleague and partner with your lawyer and the contracting officer if you have a basic understanding of contracts in general, government contracts in particular, and your role in helping your agency solicit, award, and administer its contracts effectively.
So knowing what the law requires of you as you do your job is critical. In Chapter 1, Making Your Decisions Legally Defensible, you will learn your legal responsibility in making a good decision—a decision that is "reasonable" and not "arbitrary and capricious" and that your agency lawyers can successfully defend.
Many government managers do not realize how well Congress has protected them when they make difficult decisions. Chapter 2, Liability for the Government Manager and the Government, explores what exposure you have if you do your job the wrong way—your liability to the federal government as well as your liability to members of the public that your work as a government manager might impact. You may be surprised to learn how little financial liability you have from making a mistake in doing your job.
It is important to put government contracts in context. Chapter 3, Unique Aspects of Government Contracts, compares government contracts with commercial contracts. This chapter is based on the assumption that every professional has some knowledge of commercial contracts simply from everyday life. So the question becomes "How do government contracts differ from commercial contracts?"
With that background, we next look at the wide range of government contracts, each of which serves a distinct purpose. Chapter 4, Types of Government Contracts, provides an overview of the various—and sometimes confusing—types of government contracts a government manager can expect to encounter.
Chapter 5, Interpreting Government Contracts, gives you as a government manager some basic rules for interpreting government contracts. Although final interpretations of a government contract are the responsibility of the contracting officer, with the agency lawyer's help, it is important for a government manager to know the basic rules of contract interpretation. These include rules that consider how a government contract has been carried out by a government manager and rules that give importance to specialties that might be within the expertise of the government manager.
One of the realities of being a government manager is that your agency might get sued for agency work in which you are involved. In Chapter 6, The Legal Landscape for Government Managers, we explain the litigation process in general, describing how a lawsuit works: Who is the judge? What jurisdiction does the judge have? What kinds of remedies can the judge provide?
Chapter 7, Types of Government Contract Litigation, gets more specific, providing an overview of the two types of lawsuits a government manager might get involved in: protests and claims.
Chapter 8, Protests, gets very specific, describing the protest process in detail. This chapter deals with controversies over the agency's award of contracts and task orders.
Chapter 9, Claims, also gets very specific, describing the claims process in detail. This chapter deals with the controversies between a vendor that holds a government contract and the agency.
Chapter 10is an overview of the ethical rules and regulations that apply to government employees in the solicitation process.
The goal of this volume in the Government Manager's Essential Library is to give you as a government manager the information you need to be a contributing partner to the agency's contracting officers and procurement lawyers. We hope you will find that this guide meets that goal.
—Terrence M. O'Connor, LL.M.
