Count me as one who hates change. I find the so-called “Revolutionary FAR Overhaul to be unnecessary, confusing, and likely to lead to more not less procurement disputes.
Read MoreA client asked me to write a step-by-step guide to Davis-Bacon Act (“DBA”) conformances. A conformance is the process for setting a prevailing wage and fringe benefit standard for job positions missing from a wage determination. This blog is meant for practitioners and contractors who must deal with conformances. It is an a summary adapted from my prior work product.
Read MoreIs roll call time compensable working time and included in the overtime calculation? The answer is ordinarily yes, and particularly so if you define it as working time in your CBA. Maybe there is an exemption you can fall in, but you have to meet the requirements of the exemption to avoid coverage.
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Practicing law and shoveling snow have some things in common. Dogged persistence is a plus in both endeavors.
Read MoreThe legal bots are coming for my job. Last year some crawler pored over my 200+ wage and hour blogs at www.awrcounsel.com and devoured them into some large language model/library of knowledge. I am the instrument of my own destruction! As the saying goes, most of us contain the seeds of our own destruction.
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One of the glories of my life is an invigorating walk to work in the fresh virgin snow, newly fallen, before anyone else has trampled it down. The world feels new and clean once again, and there is, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, about Jay Gatsby, “some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life….”
Read MoreI write about this after the events of January 30, 2026, when my silver investments peaked at $121 an ounce only to fall in a breathtaking swoop to a low of $71 an ounce later in the same day. Here is my thinking on the extraordinary event and a lifetime of investing.
Read MoreAlaska Airlines operational problems and serial seat bumping have led me to turn a jaundice eye on frequent flyer programs. “The squeeze is not worth the juice.”
Read MoreDelta Airlines decision to bump me out of a first-class seat on a 10-hour flight at the boarding gate really burns me up. There is something seriously wrong in the airline industry.
Read MoreThis blog has nothing to do with Government Contracts, my avocation. It instead focuses on investing, one of my hobbies. (My wife says I don’t have any hobbies, but that’s because she isn’t interested in the hobbies I have.) Anyway, here are some investment predictions for 2026.
Read MoreIt took only a week or one of my predictions about 2026 to likely come to fruition. In last week’s blog, I gave ten predictions about the coming year. Number 7 was as follows: “Defense contractors with cost reimbursement contracts and pricing power will continue to see heavy demand for equipment and services and will prosper.”
Read MoreIt is the last day of an eventful year. I thought I would try my hand at predicting what happens in the government contract world in 2026.
Read MoreDOL completed part of its deregulatory efforts yesterday when it fully revoked the regulations issued by former President Biden’s Administration on so-called nondisplacement of workers. The new DOL action involved the rescission of regulations published by the previous administration in 2023 requiring contractors and subcontractors to give qualified employees the right of first refusal of employment with a successor contract.
Read MoreIn the usual course of events, any SCA price adjustment proposed must be grounded in the contractor’s actual incurred costs, not the costs the contractor proposed that it would incur when it agreed to the contract.
Read MoreI have looked at the FAR Part 22 labor and employment provision changes in the proposed Revolutionary FAR Overhaul. To my eyes they don’t seem so “revolutionary.” Mostly, what they do is move the interpretive regulations to the new FAR Companion or other resources. That may reduce their importance. And that may make it easier to evade compliance. But that isn’t likely to change much for the prevailing wage field since the FAR regulations were simply a restatement of the Department of Labor’s (“DOL’s”) Part 4 and 5 regulations found in 29 Code of Federal Regulation. Those DOL regulations have been around for a long time. Taking provisions out of the regulatory book (yet leaving DOL’s regulatory scheme in place) and leaving existing statutory provisions on the books, does NOT constitute a “revolution.”
Read MoreValuing a parking space or the absence thereof in a real estate transaction is more art than science. Some of the factors to consider include the cost to build it, the revenue it could generate, and how scarce parking is in the community..
Read MoreDue to the shutdown, furlough, and perhaps policy confusion, DOL has yet to announce the new federal Contractor Minimum Wage to be effective January 1, 2026.
Read MoreI won’t bury the lede – I’m retiring. This will be my last AWR blog post.
Read MoreThe end of the Government shutdown comes with some surprising off year election results.
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It is buyer beware when it comes to buying aging condos and co-ops. If the HOA fees are too low, worry about deferred maintenance cost. If the HOA fees are high, look to see what additional maintenance and capital expenses are coming, and worry about what else can go wrong.
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