Here’s the Navy getting “legally creative” with contracts to keep ship maintenance on track back in 2017:
The Navy has gotten creative in dealing with budget uncertainties and continuing resolutions, developing a new ship maintenance contract structure to keep 11 ship availabilities on track at the beginning of Fiscal Year 2018 that would otherwise face major delays due to the impending CR, the head of surface ship maintenance told USNI News…
To avoid these delays, Downey said the Navy is now awarding contracts that are structured differently, to leverage the fact that maintenance work is typically funded with one-year money – use-it-or-lose-it money which must be spent in the year it is appropriated by lawmakers – whereas modernization efforts are typically paid for with three-year money. In essence, the planning and early work for a ship availability can get started as a ship modernization effort, with planning and early activities paid for with three-year money already in the Navy’s accounts, and one-year maintenance work can be added in later, once the availability is already underway and Congress eventually gives the Navy its full-year appropriations.
“We’ve worked very hard on how we structure our funding to get the planning to keep all those ships in play, and to keep them in play to their schedule, expecting that the funding is going to come just in time,” Downey said.
“So we do the planning for them. … And then we go ahead and structure that contract to deal with the continuing resolution. So the base work now may be more modernization-related because I have that money, and I’m going to lay the maintenance work in as an option. So I’m going to award you the contract; I may not be 100-percent funded but I am funded for this part. I’m going to award the contract to you – we’re currently referring to it as a split-CLIN approach – so that you’ve got the work and you know that the rest of the work is coming, you’re going to be able to bid against it, we’re going to exercise those options if we get the budget approved.”
You’d think that these actions fly in the face of Congressional intent for appropriated funds, but ultimately, Congress wants doesn’t want to see employment disruptions come back to bite them.
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