A Veterans Affairs contracting officer put it in an email: “VA does not have the skill or manpower (nor has it ever) to do schedule reviews.” That line is now in the record of a Civilian Board of Contract Appeals decision issued August 28, and it explains most of what the case is about.
The Board denied VA’s motion for summary judgment, holding that the word “schedules” in the agency’s standard architect-engineer special provision is ambiguous and does not plainly obligate a design firm to review the construction contractor’s monthly CPM schedules.
What the A/E contract said, and didn’t
Michael Avramides Architects signed a March 2020 A/E services contract to design a new sterile processing service facility or renovate the existing one, split into a design period and a construction-services period. VA exercised the construction-services option in January 2025, and the schedule-review dispute followed.
The contested clause is special provision SP-27, covering shop drawings and submittals, which requires the A/E to check the contractor’s “shop drawings and detail drawings, schedules, descriptive literature, and samples, and review the color, texture, and suitability of materials.” Judge Marian E. Sullivan, writing for a panel with Judges Sheridan and O’Rourke, found the pivot right there: “It is not clear how MAA would review the color, texture, and suitability of a monthly construction schedule.”
VA leaned on Program Guide PG-18-15 and its attached December 2012 Critical Path Method design manual. The Board noted the guide never states that the A/E must evaluate the contractor’s monthly schedules against the preliminary schedule. Related provisions, SP-26 on construction-period responsibilities and SP-18 on project phasing, ask the A/E to “assist the Contracting Officer in coordinating the development of a CPM network,” which is not the same duty. The ambiguity analysis turned on a dictionary split between “schedule” as a list or inventory of details and “schedule” as a timed plan, citing Metric Constructors v. NASA and E.L. Hamm & Assocs. v. England.
Nine years, twelve projects, no reply brief
MAA’s principal declared that across nine years and twelve prior VA projects under the same or similar SP-26 and SP-27 language, “schedules” meant design schedules and drawing-based tables, and the firm was never asked to review contractor CPM schedules. VA filed no reply brief and did not rebut that declaration. The Board hasn’t accepted the course-of-dealing evidence yet and wants further proceedings, so this is a denial of summary judgment, not a merits win.
The claim itself came in awkwardly. The original appeal lacked a sum certain; after a Board conference, MAA submitted a new claim to the contracting officer for $39,450.84 in CPM schedule-review costs. That amount is claimed, not awarded. Notices of appeal were docketed July 30, 2025 and April 13, 2026, consolidated on April 27.
Read your own SP-26 this week
Federal agencies have been quietly sliding construction-phase schedule review onto A/E teams whose fee was priced for design-period submittal checking. This is the first crisp ruling that boilerplate doesn’t get them there. The CO’s admission states the underlying problem out loud: somebody has to do CPM review on a federal job, and neither the fee nor the contract language ever moved to match.
Design firms carrying construction-services options on VA, Corps or GSA work should pull their equivalent clauses now, particularly where an airport or hospital program runs a long construction period with a separate CM at risk, as at Spokane International Airport’s Central Hall. The practical takeaway is narrow and useful: a scope this consequential has to be named in the contract, not inferred from one word. The decision is on the CBCA site.