Hello Investigators,
ClearanceJobs got to sit down with NBIB Dir. Phalen this afternoon and discuss some of the issues arising from the transfer to DoD. Here’s a summary of our discussion:
Interested to hear your thoughts and questions.
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I know this is old, but I’m curious as to why there’s no work amongst all of the contractors. Do you all believe it will pick up anytime soon?
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I am surprised no one is talking about the low work. I’ve noticed it too. Very scary.
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Yup! Maybe they don’t know. At first I was like oh it’ll pick up. Now I’m like when?
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I’m hearing that layoffs are starting at one of the prime contractors.
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Really which one? I mean I’m not surprised though. We literally have no work
GDIT. About 1/5 of the team I’m on as well as my field sup got laid off today. They’ve been told they can work until 6/21 and my field sup was told she could be retained as an investigator if there was a need in the area…as they’re laying off investigators.
do any of the contracting companies have work right now?
It’s low low low! Everyone is low.
I’ve heard there’s action out west, but here in the east it’s a dead zone. People are getting laid off like I said above. I think part of the GDIT layoffs may be the result of over-hiring since they were picking up practically anyone who wanted a job about a year ago, but DOD being stingy right now is really hurting us too.
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Yeah I believe it was the over hiring as well! There were a lot
I am west of the Mississippi and we have work in most of our areas, to include enough for our contractors.
I am surprised GDIT is laying off investigators since they were trying to poach ISN investigators in my AO. Though GDIT made a tactical error when they let ISN go to CACI.
Contractors get work based on capacity, i.e. how may available investigators they have, and the amount of work they have on hand. Having cases hanging open with one item means the entire case is considered open. Now GDIT has a lot of work they assigned to ISN that was open (ISN can’t complete the open cases because the cases belong to GDIT) and no one is around to close them. NBIB might have slowed assigning work to GDIT until they close some of their inventory. (DISCLAIMER: I don’t know this for a fact. This speculation is from past experiences as a mid-level OPM contract investigator manager).
The workload is getting closer to “real time” - how we saw the work load in 2013 -2014. This is a concern for ares/orgs that overbuilt their capacity to close inventory. This is an old story unfortunately.
The Federal employees have been told that at the field team levels, we will not have any major personnel changes for a few years until DCSA management is in place and they can figure out how the new processes will impact work. I don’t know how this will impact contracting companies who need income to pay their field staff.
We have been told that contractors are here going to continue to be team members in DCSA.
So, DOD is the one that isn’t giving work? Is NBIB not handling any part of it now?
Will contracting companies have to rebid for work anytime soon?
The part that is concerning to me is that the other 3 contractors are still snatching up credentialed investigators like crazy. So, all the laid off GDIT investigators will (likely) be able to get hired from any one of the other 3 companies. Which is great for those investigators…but there is still no work to be had. So, why are the other companies still hiring?? It looks like we are no longer operating under the “more investigators=more work” philosophy that the BI companies have operated under for so long. Sometimes it seems like we are all just rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic…
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My understanding is DOD gave cases to NBIB to work, but since DOD is taking over the whole process they aren’t giving NBIB much work, if any, to complete until the handover takes place in October.
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I’ve heard CACI is making their investigators use up their leave when they don’t have work, then take LWOP when their leave is used up. One of the field sup’s I’ve kept in touch with has said investigators are averaging about 30 hours per week paid.
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I’m in Southeastern VA…home of the world’s largest navy base but no security clearance investigations to be done.
I can’t imagine GDIT letting the good investigators go. So snatching up credentialed investigators is silly! Yeah I’m October we will probably be booming. But it seems as though they are building up another backlog!
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I was almost poached by GDIT last year for a TDY investigator position and they wanted me to go TDY to Guam for 3 months at a time. I guess I’m glad I stayed where I’m at for now, especially after hearing about layoffs