As feared, the 16-day government shutdown forced contractors to scramble for cash, revise their schedules, and reconnect with their agency liaisons, according to trade association officials.
“The good news is that most companies are putting folks back to work, which they should have been doing all along had there not been a shutdown,” said Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president and counsel at the Professional Services Council. “Our member survey shows that a large percentage of member companies did receive one or more stop-work orders. And though most, but not all, of those have now been reversed, large numbers of those contracts were unnecessarily and inappropriately stopped.”
Chvotkin said many agencies sent out blanket notices to all their contractors, even though a reading of the law says the notices would not apply to contracts fully funded in fiscal 2013 and contracts that don’t require access to government facilities or significant agency supervision. “So companies are now trying to redo those actions and restart work, which takes significant administrative work and deadlines such as something that was due in 30 days have to be rescheduled.”
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