Victoria Skiera, a lawyer in Covington’s government contracts practice, and Scott Freling, co-chair of Covington’s government contracts practice, were quoted by Law360 in its preview of five upcoming policy changes with significant potential impacts on government contractors during the second half of the year, including the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council’s Revolutionary FAR Overhaul and the Defense Department’s proposed rule expanding foreign ownership disclosure requirements.
Commenting on the FAR Overhaul rulemaking, Victoria said it was important for contractors to closely review solicitations and their resulting contracts to determine which version of relevant FAR clauses and agency supplements are being incorporated, and then for deviated versions, if they’re implemented, determine how they actually change any obligations or requirements under the contract.
"The answer, as always, will be fact-specific and specific to the type of contract and the agency with which contractors are engaging. But … the process as it currently stands can create some just ambiguity in terms of the status and resulting implementation of the deviated FAR parts, and then now, as we move towards the rulemaking, also those requirements,” Victoria said.
On the DOD’s proposed rule expanding foreign ownership disclosure requirements to contractors and subcontractors involved in sensitive unclassified defense work above a $5 million threshold, the DOD said it anticipated 37,740 contractors and subcontractors would be affected. Scott called that a “rough estimate,” saying “there could well be a lot more” contractors and subcontractors affected. He also said the proposed rule was “quite thin on details.”
"There are still a lot of unanswered questions in terms of how it’s actually going to be implemented. And those questions are important for a number of reasons, certainly to help assess the burden and for contractors to understand what obligations they’re going to be under, but also to see how this plays out and whether it’s going to potentially risk delays in the award cycle as these pre-contract award disclosures need to be submitted and reviewed,” Scott said.
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