DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE: January 5, 2016
CBCA 3868, 3869, 4687, 4688, 4745
GONZALES CONSULTING SERVICES, INC.,
Appellant,
v.
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY,
Respondent.
Mark J. Meagher of Dentons US LLP, Denver, CO, counsel for Appellant.
The case caption as the decision prints it. Every word is kept; the rule the Board draws around it is not text, so it is not repeated here.
Timothy J. Lorenzi, Office of General Counsel, Department of Homeland Security, Philadelphia, PA, counsel for Respondent.
DANIELS, Board Judge (Chairman).
Order
The Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service (FPS) contracted with Gonzales Consulting Services, Inc. (GCS) to staff call centers (known as “MegaCenters”) in Battle Creek, Michigan; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Suitland, Maryland; and Denver, Colorado. These centers answer dispatching calls from security personnel at federal facilities and monitor alarm systems at those facilities. The centers have been called the Federal Government’s “911 emergency response service.”
Disputes arose between the parties as to payment for the services provided by GCS under these contracts. Each party made claims against the other, contracting officer decisions were issued, and appeals were taken. The appeals involving the Battle Creek center were docketed as CBCA 3868 and 4687; the appeals involving the Philadelphia center were docketed as CBCA 3869 and 4688; and the appeal involving the Suitland center was docketed as CBCA 4745.
The parties engaged in an alternative dispute resolution session with the presiding judge in September 2015. They had agreed in advance that during the session, the judge would mediate the disputes with the objective of having the parties reach a voluntary settlement of the cases, but that if the mediation were to fail to achieve this objective, the parties would submit the cases to binding arbitration, with the judge issuing an unappealable decision. The parties did not resolve the cases voluntarily. Accordingly, the judge issued a binding, unappealable arbitration decision.
The parties have now complied with the judge’s arbitration decision and have jointly moved the Board to dismiss the appeals with prejudice.
The motion is granted. CBCA 3868, 3869, 4687, 4688, and 4745 are DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE.
_________________________
STEPHEN M. DANIELS
Board Judge
This is a verbatim capture of the text layer of the Board's own document in Gonzales Consulting Services, Inc., CBCA 3868, 3869, 4687, 4688, 4745. Nothing is summarized or reworded, and the sections run in the order the Board wrote them. What the page shows and the text does not repeat is the pagination furniture: the page numbers and the rules the Board draws around its caption and under its signatures. The signatures are set back into the columns the Board prints them in, each judge under the name he or she signed, and the typed copy of that name the page carries beneath each signature is not repeated.