Archer Western Contractors. LLC v. U.S. Department of Transportation, No. 20-1520 (D.C. Cir. 2022)

The Federal Aviation Administration hired Archer Western Contractors to build air traffic structures for an airport in Las Vegas. Archer challenged the FAA’s resolution of three contract disputes.
 
On the first dispute, the FAA said that Archer waited too long to challenge the FAA’s failure to provide an equitable adjustment for a modification to the contract. For the second dispute, the FAA said that Archer’s claim regarding contract modifications’ “cumulative impact” was also untimely. As for the third dispute, the FAA found that Archer had failed to install proper rectangular air ducts.
 
The DC Circuit granted Petitioners’ petition in part and denied it in part. The court vacated the FAA’s order only as to its dismissal of Archer’s first claim for failure to provide an equitable adjustment. The other challenged aspects of the FAA’s order are not arbitrary and capricious. The court held that the FAA erred in dismissing as untimely Archer’s failure-to-provide-an-equitable-adjustment claim. The court agreed with the FAA on the other two issues.
 
The court explained that it is reviewing a failure-to-provide-an-equitable-adjustment claim. And that claim was timely filed only one year and four months after it accrued — well within the two-year window for Archer to file a claim. However, Archer needed to separately allege a claim for cumulative impact within two years of that claim’s accrual. Instead, the ODRA did not receive notice of Archer’s cumulative impact until well past the contract’s two-year limit for filing a claim. The FAA was therefore correct to dismiss Archer’s cumulative-impact claim as untimely.