The maximum dollar value including the base period, seven option years, and one six-month extension of services option is $514,947,109.  Work will be performed in Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory, and is expected to be completed by May 2025.

No funds will be obligated at time of award.  Fiscal 2017 operations and maintenance (Navy); fiscal 2017 operations and maintenance (Air Force); and fiscal 2017 non-appropriated contract funds in the amount of $56,909,952 for recurring work will be obligated on individual task orders issued during the mobilization and base period; of which $28,915,963 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year and $9,587,313 is subject to the availability of funds for the next fiscal year.  This contract was competitively procured via the Navy Electronic Commerce Online website, with two proposals received.

ABOUT KBR, Inc.

KBR is a global provider of differentiated professional services and technologies across the asset and program life cycle within the Hydrocarbons and Government Services Sectors. KBR employs over 34,000 people worldwide, with customers in more than 80 countries, and operations in 40 countries.

“Through constantly shifting theories, McBride has dragged this languishing case along long after discovery — including the deposition testimony of the U.S. Army’s own Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6) witnesses — made clear that KBR’s recreation-center headcounts were immaterial,” the brief said.

The companies urged the court to reject McBride’s appeal without oral argument, citing years of litigation and high cost of its defense. In addition, the companies pointed out that only KBR Services is the proper defendant in the case, and the litigation has put a substantial burden on the other companies involved.

“The time has come to finally close the book on this costly litigation, which, as the district court noted, has forced KBR to spend ‘a king’s ransom’ defending against baseless claims,” the brief said.

McBride’s appeal argued that the judge did not apply a two-prong test, laid out in U.S. v. Science Applications International Corp., in which a court weighs whether adherence to contractual requirements was either a precondition for payment or material to payment.

Had U.S. District Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. used this test, he would have found that contract clauses made clear that contract adherence was a condition for KBR’s payment, she said. In addition, a government contracting officer has said officials “may not have paid” had they known KBR violated its contractual obligations, McBride said.

KBR did not meet a contractual obligation related to keeping sufficient records of its staffing levels at a morale, welfare and recreation center for Marines in Iraq, and therefore filed false claims by not disclosing this when it billed the government for payment, according to McBride.

An attorney for KBR has said that the contractor did not inflate its staffing numbers and did not use these figures as a basis for its billing. Thursday’s brief built on that argument, saying that contracting officials based their staffing for billing on the overall population of the base, not any measure of the use of the facility.

In a statement from counsel John Elwood, KBR defended its record in Iraq, saying it was proud of the work that it had done on behalf of the military and that it hoped the DC Circuit would affirm Judge Scullin’s decision.

“The district court correctly held that the alleged inflation of headcounts at KBR-run recreation centers in Iraq was immaterial to government payment decisions and thus cannot give rise to False Claims Act liability. Relator Julie McBride’s appeal seeks to set aside that well-reasoned decision,” the statement said.

McBride, along with two former KBR employees, had filed a qui tam suit against KBR, then-parent Halliburton Co. and several units of the companies in April 2005, alleging violations of the FCA, retaliation, and breach of employment contract.

In 2001, KBR had been awarded a contract to carry out the third round of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Logistics Civil Augmentation Program in support of the global war on terror. According to the suit, the defendants overbilled the government on one of the task orders under the multibillion-dollar contract, which allowed KBR to bill the government for a base fee, plus a potential performance fee and costs.

In October 2015, Judge Scullin declined to reconsider his summary judgment grant to KBR, saying he already wrestled with the case law and was unconvinced by McBride’s arguments there was sufficient evidence to support claims against the contractor.