Geurts says accelerated contract awards will limit effects of anticipated continuing resolution period

The Navy's accelerated timeline for awarding contracts will help cushion the service and industry partners through an anticipated continuing resolution period, Navy acquisition executive Hondo Geurts said Tuesday.

The Navy started accelerating upcoming contract awards in response to the coronavirus pandemic in March. The service wanted to have plans in place to get through a continuing resolution period during an election year, Geurts said during the Navy's Gold Coast Small Business Procurement Event Tuesday.

Geurts told Inside Defense shortly after his remarks that the accelerated contracting timeline would ensure that there would be no gaps in the industrial base's workload during a continuing resolution period.

The original acceleration provided stability to the industry during the pandemic, he said.

"The secondary benefit of that is to give us some additional resources to plan and ensure we don't have a disruption, or minimize a disruption, in a continuing resolution period and make sure we've got that work lined up and ready to go in a continuing resolution," Geurts said.

Geurts said he was most concerned about awarding a Columbia-class submarine construction contract during a continuing resolution.

"We've been communicating that clearly with all the committees in Congress," he said. "We believe they recognize the criticality of that and so I believe everyone is aligned along those lines."