“Congress bought itself a short month to get together on final appropriations for 2022. Even if they do agree that there’s a deal on March 11, that means 2022 money will arrive nearly halfway through the fiscal year. And even then accounts won’t be ready on the 11th. For contractor and procurement implications, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin turned to federal sales and marketing consultant, Larry Allen…”
“Tom Temin: Right, that would be well past the halfway point. And so for contractors, what can they reasonably expect the government to be able to do with that half a fiscal year, even though they might have full year appropriations?
Larry Allen: Well, I think Tom, we can expect to see projects be funded right out of the box, a lot of preliminary work being done right now, everything that can be done without money, and not on all projects. But look, a lot of experienced veterans and federal agencies have told me they’ve got a pretty good idea of what their core funding is going to be. They know what projects they’re going to be able to fund. So for that set of projects, that set of activities, they can proceed up to the point where they need appropriation to actually drop the RFP or RFQ. Contractors can see it and expect to see I think, very frenetic activity, there will also always be some surprises. Congress may fund some things more than agencies expected. They may not fund things at all that agencies thought we’re going to get funds, you know, those are going to be last-minute surprises one way or the other. But the big thing I think that contractors can expect to see is that there really is no way, Tom, that agencies are going to be able to get all the money committed in five and a half months, no matter how quickly people move over, no matter how much advanced work they’ve done, there’s going to be money left on the table. So if you’re a contractor, even more so than in other years, you want to work closely with your customers, to make sure your project gets funded, that you’ve made it as easy as possible for your agency customer to do business with you that way. You get your project through, they get to get their project done, and everybody wins…” Read the full interview here.
Source: What full-year appropriations halfway through the year means to contracting – By Tom Temin, February 15, 2022. Federal News Network.
