Prior to Thanksgiving, the president signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act of FY 2016 (NDAA Bill), which includes several AGC-backed federal procurement reform provisions that will help prevent individual surety fraud, allow joint ventures to submit individual businesses’ relevant past performance evaluations as part of their proposals—not merely the relevant past performance of the joint venture itself—and fix a recent court decision that would have required small business construction contractors to purchase all their materials and supplies from other small businesses.

Congress Drafting an End-of-Year Funding Bill Last week, AGC sent a letter to congressional leaders and members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees detailing the construction industry’s priorities for the fiscal year 2016 funding bill. In the letter, AGC urges appropriators to prioritize infrastructure investment and pro-infrastructure policies, which include prohibiting implementation of a number of regulations like the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ “Waters of the U.S.” rule, the Federal Acquisition Regulation Council and Department of Labor’s Blacklisting proposed rule, and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s local hiring initiatives for federal-aid highway and transit projects.

Contact your Congressmen and Tell Them to Support a Long-Term Bill This week, select members of the House and Senate –called conferees – began negotiations on resolving the differences between the two chambers’ long-term highway & transit bills. However, with funding levels and duration yet to be agreed upon, negotiations are off to a slow start, which could result in yet another short-term extension if Congress does not reach a deal by November 20. AGC – along with our members and chapters – has been a leader in the reauthorization process and advocated for the construction industry’s priorities in a letter to all conferees, detailing which provisions and policies should be included in a final transportation bill. Please visit Hardhats for Highways and send a letter to your members of Congress, urging them to support a long-term highway & transit bill.

As previously reported by AGC, the Bipartisan Budget Act was a two-year budget agreement that Present Obama signed into law on Nov. 2. The bill included a provision that repeals the prohibition against adjusting the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) civil penalties for inflation. Unlike other similar federal civil penalties – which are covered by the Federal Civil Penalties Adjustment Act of 1990 – the OSHA civil penalties have been explicitly exempted from inflation since 1990. This means that OSHA penalties will now increase for the first time in 25 years.

AGC Federal Procurement Priorities to Become Law Both the House (last week) and Senate (this week) overwhelmingly passed the National Defense Authorization Act of FY 2016 (NDAA Bill), a bill the president vetoed just two weeks ago. The president is expected to sign the bill into law as a result of the bipartisan budget agreement reached two weeks ago. Compared to the vetoed version of the bill, this NDAA bill has slightly lower levels of spending for Department of Defense programs.

AGC was instrumental in advancing the debate for a private activity bond (PAB) provision during the debate on the surface transportation reauthorization and funding measure last week in the House. The Performance Based Building Coalition is promoting the creation for a new category of Exempt Facility Bonds for public buildings (e.g. courthouses and universities) that would utilize public-private partnerships (P3s) to advance public projects and unlock the doors for private investment in our nation’s public building infrastructure.

Extension Through Nov. 20 This week saw significant progress in moving a multi-year highway & transit bill. Following passage of the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2015 (STRRA) in the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee last week, the full House is expected to consider the bill next week.

Recently, AGC sent letters opposing the possible use of a project labor agreement (PLA) mandate posted by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southwest (NAVFAC) and the General Services Administration Mid-Atlantic Region (GSA). The letters address the possible use of mandatory PLAs involving the construction of the Special Operations Forces Logistics Support Unit One Operations Facility at the Navy’s Silver Strand Training Complex in Imperial Beach, California and a Measurement Systems Laboratory at the NASA Langley Research Center located in Hampton, Virginia.

Visit AGC’s Action Center at www.agc.org/TakeAction One of the numerous issues AGC is working on in the highway & transit bill is to provide some relief from hours of service restrictions on construction industry drivers. For the past 20 years, current law has provided a limited construction industry exemption which has had no negative impact on driver safety. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration recently provided an additional similar exemption for certain construction material deliveries. AGC is seeking to modernize the existing exemption to meet the challenges of construction material and equipment delivery.

The House and Senate approved the conference report for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016, which includes several AGC-supported procurement reforms. Those reforms: