Suppose, your small company, UFP Inc., has a subcontract with Sith Enterprises Corp. which has a prime contract with the National Security Agency. Your subcontract requires UFP to provide translators fluent in Klingon. The Sith program manager and subcontract administer refuse to provide you with a copy of the prime contract. Because of your lack of negotiating leverage (since there appear to be way too many Klingon speakers around), you had to accept a very one-sided subcontract that says, among other things, that you get paid when the prime contractor gets paid.

Your translators working at the NSA facility report that there appears to be trouble between the Sith program manager and the NSA program manager over who rules the universe. Now your invoices aren’t getting paid and the Sith subcontractor administrator tells you that the problem is that NSA is dissatisfied with your translators. Your translators at the NSA facility disagree very strongly with this allegation.

• What can you do at this point to resolve the issue and get paid?

• Can you talk directly to the NSA contracting officer?

• Could you file a claim with the NSA contracting officer?

• Is there anything the NSA contracting officer can do to help you get paid?

Although the names have been changed to protect the innocent and not so innocent, this is not an uncommon problem for subcontractors