The Office of Federal Contractor Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has its eye on federal contractors supporting construction projects for the government. The OFCCP Director Jenny Yang recently announced plans to get their construction contractor program back in full swing with reviewing compliance obligations under Executive Order 11246, Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA). As the federal government puts more focus on infrastructure improvements, the OFCCP issued a federal construction contractor Corporate Scheduling Announcement List (CSAL) at the beginning of September. This would be their second issuance, with the first issued on April 8, 2019. DoD contractors should plan to review their compliance. Expect more CSALs in the future too.
Layoffs Impacting the Cleared Industry
| United Airlines | While defense contractors still have time to enforce COVID-19 vaccination, United Airlines is on its own timeline of imposing a vaccine mandate. As travel begins to resume, the airline company has given layoff notices to 593 employees for violating the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. While United Airlines vaccine mandate in August was one of the first major companies to make the move, many other major organizations followed suit. At this point, United Airlines notes that 99% of their employees are vaccinated, excluding those with religious or medical accommodation. |
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Hiring impacting the Cleared Industry
| Raytheon | While Raytheon’s acquisition of SEAKR Engineering has grown their presence in Colorado, Raytheon is also looking to add 250 employees in the area too. Once the SEAKR Engineering deal closes, Raytheon’s Colorado presence will grow to about 3,240 employees.
“Our population is definitely going to grow,” Roy Azevedo, president of Raytheon Intelligence & Space said. “We’re looking for 250 people today, and almost all of them are going to work in our Aurora programs.” After the space and airborne division merged with its intelligence and information systems division at Raytheon, the acquisition of Blue Canyon Technologies further added capabilities and expanded the Raytheon footprint in the Denver area. “Our adversaries are getting better at what they do, it seems like on a daily basis,” Azevedo said. “It can’t be that we just keep up, we have to stay ahead.” |
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Opportunity to Watch
Space Force officials plan to meet with defense contractors later this month to share intelligence about threats to U.S. satellites. The October 27 meeting of the minds will be a little bit different than other defense industry events.
“The people that are going to participate are going to probably get the largest trove of threat models that have ever been released, ever,” Andrew Cox, the director of the Space Warfighting Analysis Center, said Oct. 1 on a webcast hosted by National Security Space Association.
SWAC will be hosting this “business fair” with representatives from the space and defense industry, and the plan is to have a classified discussion that focuses on early-warning satellites, as well as, how to make them more resistant to anti-satellite weapons. As Space Force plans for the next generation of sensors and defending the U.S. against Chinese hypersonic weapons, the need for a more nontraditional approach has emerged.
While contractors may be tempted to bring in business development participants, event organizers are asking for strategists and technical experts to help Space Force consider future capabilities.
“I have never seen an instance where we’ve put this level of work into detailed threat models that industry will now have in their hands to help them understand what kind of threats and targets we need to worry about for the foreseeable future,” Cox said. “Some of those models often stop where the intelligence record ends. And we have to fill in the holes with good engineering judgment. So we’ll have a robust conversation about this.”
Cox said that the chief of space operations of the Space Force Gen. John “Jay” Raymond will kick off the briefing, sharing his strategic perspective.
Cox expects similarly strategic-minded leaders to engage with Space Force on what the industry actually needs to look like. And in order to ensure future investments are headed in the right direction, it requires a strategic and informed vision.
“We would also like to have people there that are technically sound in this particular mission area: system engineers, senior technical leads from your corporations, because we are going to geek out a little bit, and show you some of these detailed models that we’ve been working on,” Cox added. “I think it would be good to have folks there that can appreciate the level of information we plan to exchange.”
The deadline to sign up is October 12, and at least 110 defense contractors and space companies have signed up already.
“We wanted to reach out to a large segment of industry,” he said. However, with COVID-19 restrictions, there will be two locations for attendees: a classified facility in Chantilly, VA and the rest in Colorado Springs, CO, using secure video-teleconferencing to connect everyone.
