Thoughts on the news today that BI division has been mandated to take 8 hours off per week? After news of the acquisition during the townhall this just doesn’t sit well. Hope I am wrong. Rumors are after 4-6 weeks a RIF may occur.
Rumors are just that: rumors. Everyone expected Perspecta to be dropped from the DCSA contract 2 years ago either because of conflict of interest concerns with their creation of DISS or because they were looking to get out of the business altogether. And it never happened.
With that said, if BI contract vendors are still doing things like mandating time off or ranking their investigators to determine individual workload (and leaving some of their own staff figuratively and literally starving) after all this time, it would suggest it’s time to get out.
And now that literally every clearance holder is expected to be enrolled in CE by the end of this year, it’s all the more reason to get out of the BI industry. The workload that used to exist to support 3-4 vendors fully staffed with FTE investigators and a smattering of 1099 contractors is never coming back. The writing has been on that wall for nearly 2 years.
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I loved management’s response “we always have low inventory this time of year”. Yeah I get that inventory is low sometimes but I have never had to take PTO for 4-6 weeks because of it.
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The BI contracting world has already significantly shrunk. I am only aware of one part-time contractor remaining in our state. Everyone else either retired or found other jobs over the last 18 months.
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Which means those that are remaining will be here to pick up the pieces and become valuable commodities with the skill set they have when the vendors and agencies get back to doing work in person after COVID subsides.
The biggest threat to the Investigator is CE. CE has eliminated 35-50% of the work. If or when CE fails or they go back to reinvestigations, BI’s will have to learn to diversify themselves with many contracts and on occasion having other sources of income to include non BI related work such as Private Investigative work in the private sector, process serving, EEOC investigations, perhaps a real estate salesman, or mortgage loan officer, etc.
I don’t know why many of you are still working F/T for these companies. They use and abuse you and then lay you off or reduce your hours.
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Hummm
I know someone recently offered a 1099 with perspecta - thinking it over. LLC is required so the offer may not be worth that expense.
Why hire 1099s if an hours cutback is happening?
Going the way of SCIS? Stringing along the full timers on reduced hours all the while hiring others who will cover the workload at a lesser expense.
As long as the industry has the 1099s the there’s no getting rid of the private contracting companies.
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@WildnCrazy Think outside of the box…there is more to this industry than DCSA to include SCIS, Perspecta, and CACI.
I got hired on with Omniplex on a couple of non dcsa contracts as a 1099, no LLC required. However, I’ve been in the process since october and still don’t have creds or anything yet. I just finished some required refresher training last week so I suppose I’ll hear something eventually, but for the most part it’s been silence since I sent back the signed offer letter.
Years ago I was “hired” by Omniplex. I signed all the paper work and never heard back from them. Same thing happened to a CI colleague of mine. I assume Omniplex was merely using my name (and the names of other new hires) as part of a head count in a contract bid?
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Well I retired last month in January. I think I was lucky to get out at the right time. The writing has been on the wall plain and simple since CE first was tossed about. I was both an employee and IC with both USIS and Perspecta. I spent 15 1/2 years in the field and 3 years in Integrity. All in all the Industry was good to me, but things existed that never were resolved at least not in my mind as an FI. I left the field in 2018 due to getting absolutely nothing but T3’s. These became more complicated than an initial T5 in my opinion. And fees were not increased in the almost 8 years I was an IC. Bottom line I was working harder for less money. Then when the LLC requirement hit, that made me subject to a 6 percent business tax in Tennessee. Prior to this I paid no tax as Tennessee has no income tax for individuals. All the best to those than remain.
I have 2 hours of vacation so this will not be going well for me 
I have applied for a security specialist job but was not referred due to not meeting requirements. Should I be looking into education or training to be more qualified? What have you other former FIs done post BI world?
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Read the details of using your sick time as well. The employee handbook has the details and it’s really pretty flexible regarding yourself and family members. I’m using Perspecta sick hours later this week for my first COVID shot.
I dont understand what is going on because they are advertising for full time in some regions and I know of Perspecta giving interviews for full-time Investigator positions as we now speak. What to make of that???
The locations they are hiring for are the places they have zero employees and typically have had to TDY FIs there. I work one of those areas often and my drive time is four hours total each trip.
Why would they care about this when all of the work is being done remotely by telephone anyways?
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Well Im contracting in the same region and baely getting any work though as a contractor so trying to understand how they can be interviewing for a FT employee in the same location.
Sorry - to clarify this is non-DCSA contract work
That I don’t understand. Makes no sense. Sorry I can only speak to the region I am in and what I was told when somebody brought up that same question during our meeting after the mandated 8 hour reduction.
Probably hiring newbys at half the salary of current full timers which may be a business move. They can get 2 people for the price of 1 then weed out high salaried current full timers by squeezing their hours. Scis did the same thing and many people left voluntarily. By doing that they don’t have to pay unemployment. Plus they took the fed covid money which I believe prohibits them from laying off for a period of time.
They did not receive COVID reimbursement money from most customers. All that COVID time we were forced to take during the summer was a financial loss for the company. It’s still a puzzle to me why customers aren’t reimbursing us just a little. The big question I have is will the layoffs occur before or after the new Peraton merger/acquisition?