July 8 OUSD A&S COVID Conference Call Notes

July 8th OSD A&S COVID Conference Call Notes:

• NID (National Interest Determination) Waiver.
• No expedited testing for DIB workforce
• FedMall is now open to small businesses with government contracts; you can obtain nonmedical PPE direct from suppliers.
• Next Webinar will be on FedMall: Wednesday, July 22. More info can be found at business.defense.gov.
• OUSD is working with the Airforce Sustainment Command and Department of Commerce on the surveys that were sent out last month. They are both ready and willing to grant extensions when company request them.

Small Business:

• Army: Continues to make awards for small business. They are up $23 million from our last call (2 weeks ago), which brings the total to $303 million to small business.
• Navy- Navy has spent $256 million to date on COVID with $67.3 million of that to going to small businesses. From an overall standpoint of doing business with the Navy, small businesses have received 13.35% of the Navy’s total spending to date.
• Airforce: 451 Small Business awardees to date, comes to 670 contract actions worth over $275 million, this includes 189 small business innovative research contract awards (there has been a significant spike in these over the last 6-8 weeks.)

DLA:

• There are 750 Industry participants registered for their July 14+15th event on PPE Demand Projection.

DPC:

• DPC released guidance on COVID-related impacts and costs on July 2 (PPE, special cleaning regiments, aligning shifts to meet social distance requirements, impacts to the supply chain etc.). Email with further guidance will be released by tomorrow.
• As discussed last month, DPC has created 3 Checklists for Sec 36 reimbursement guidance. They received 350 industry comments for input and took those into account.

DCMA:

• Payments: Progress payments are down to 111 paid out last week worth $126 million dollars, which was down $775 million the previous week.
• All payments in general are down. Performance Based Payments came in for 18 worth $49 million, which is lower than the typical 30+ worth $½ billion.
• 457 operational impacts, 285 closures, currently 6 facilities closed.
  (up 1 from last week).
• 75% of all aircraft programs have been impacted. 83% of have closures occurred from furloughs and layoffs; the trend is heading in an upward direction in response to the virus.

Associations/Chamber:

• Industry is looking for instant tests for their employees because the additional waiting time for lab results is hindering closed facilities ability to open. OUSD asks that if you’ve been able to acquire these to communicate it with them so they can help other firms obtain them.

About the authors

Keith Webster

Keith Webster, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Defense and Aerospace Council, guides the focus of the council to strengthen the U.S. defense and aerospace industries by influencing domestic and international policy on behalf of its members.

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