Get ready. Furlough details starting to emerge

More details are emerging about furloughs at the Defense Department as the government figures out how to deal with sequestration budget targets.

DOD now expects to furlough 800,000 civilian employees this summer for 11 days, Politico is reporting.

That’s half the number that was expected when sequestration took effect on March 1. Incredibly, two and half months later, major government contractors are still waiting for answers from their customers. Perhaps this is the start of more specific information becoming available.

Many executive are starting to look to fiscal 2014 for the more severe impacts to be felt.

The bottom line is that you had better be ready. So I thought I’d remind readers about Mark Hoover’s article from late April reviewing critical questions to ask customers about furloughs.

The best advice is to get out in front of your customers, particularly with contracting officers, who control the purse strings.

Questions to ask include:

• Can work take place while civilian workers are on furlough?
• Can work be accepted?
• Will you have access to perform work?

That’s just a start of course. And remember there is no single answer that applies across all customers, so you need to get out and ask each customer.

And to sound like a broken record – talk to those contracting officers. They are the only ones who can obligate the government.

Good luck.