KNOXVILLE, TENN – In the fifth week of the government shutdown, Department of Energy subcontractors are struggling to keep afloat, small businesses representatives said at a conference here Wednesday.
At the Energy, Technology and Environmental Business Association’s (ETEBA) annual Business Opportunities and Technical Conference, a panel of executives from DOE subcontractors spoke about how they are navigating the shutdown.
“All of us as small businesses have to watch [our] cash,” Bill Tindal, Omega Technical Services CEO, said while moderating the panel’s government shutdown discussion.
“We’ve got to make sure we got enough cash to support both the corporate employees that we have,” Tindal said. It also includes ”working with your insurance providers” to find out how long employee benefits can be sustained even if staffers must be furloughed.
The subcontractor managers said their companies took steps to prepare furlough plans and other contingencies to take care of employees. Many panelists said they implemented government shutdown and furlough date trackers.
Christine Gelles, Longenecker & Associates chief operating officer, said the company has furloughed one to two employees but none of its projects have been affected yet. Longenecker works across 20 DOE complex sites, Gelles said.
“Quite frankly the projection of impact [of the shutdown] changes truly day to day,” Gelles said. “To be honest I didn’t think it was going to last this long.”
Ryan Overton, executive vice president at Navarro Research and Engineering, echoed Gelles’s talking points and said the company focused on keeping communication open with its employees.
For Navarro, Overton said the DOE Office of Environmental Management “took proactive steps” to ensure funding through November for many of the sites where the company works.
TechSource CEO and Chair Brian D’Andrea said his company developed a furlough policy and built a resource base years in advance to try to allocate financial resources to retain employees.
Prior to the shutdown, TechSource had managed to win some major contracts in late September, said D’Andrea.
Other panelists were Management Solutions Founder and CEO Misty Mayes and RSI Vice President of Operations Jeff Bale.