That's what I thought, regarding recouping the overpaid fees. Where the hesitancy comes in is that the final rates and closeout audit and negotiations will not be done for years, so it "could" be said that we don't have the official actual costs, and therefore cannot are unable to conclusively state that the actual costs are high enough to only warrant the min fee.
My common sense keeps warring with the standard operating procedures.
You would agree then Vern that for the remaining life of the contract no fee would be available.
BTW- in my post, I'm using the RIE as my point of actual costs in which the contractor no longer can earn anything above or below the min fee. It's not a contractual term, but in this situation is the highest amount that can be accrued in actual costs before the warning bells go off, so to speak.
Just to summarize, I will be issuing a mod to increase the estimated costs and add incremental funds. I would start the process for recouping the overpaid fee, and any future invoices would be cost only (no fee available or paid). Do you think this sounds right?
I imagine that without fee, the contract performance will diminish significantly and the contract will end up being terminated.