Effective March 16, 2020, the Department of Defense has banned all domestic travel for personnel and families in response to the COVID-19 situation. Surely other contracting agencies will follow with similar bans. The potential and daunting implications of this travel ban for DOD contractors performing contracts that rely on some degree of travel by government personnel in aid of contract performance is enormous. Therefore, prudent contractors must reflect immediately on their particular situation to assess the ban’s real and potential effects on the performance of their contracts.

In generic terms, only (every situation is somewhat different), contractors should evaluate their performance posture in the following steps, beginning now: 

1. Create an inventory of all contract vehicles currently being performed that may be affected. Remember that often performance will sometimes be conditioned on inspections, government personnel witnessing tests or validations, or approvals, and so forth. Travel by essential government personnel may be involved.
2. For each contract, collect all of the terms and conditions of that specific contract and any modifications. Note dates, because individual clauses sometimes are changed significantly, from version-to-version. The date of the contract, as well as the date of the clauses included (expressly, or by reference), can have great importance.
3. The Government may take the position that the genesis of the entire matter relates to COVID-19 and therefore the only relief would be performance relief (without additional compensation) under the force majeure provision in the contract.
4. There also are other legal doctrines and contract provisions that may be important to whether a contractor is compensated for impacts associated with the travel ban. For example, should the Government take the position that the ban itself is a “Sovereign Act” (which would seem highly likely) there would be no compensation available other than Extraordinary Relief under PL 85-804 and related implementation of that law. The posture of the government will be important to the success of any request under PL 85-804, should that be the best approach for obtaining relief.  
5. Finally, several contract provisions are routinely included (some of which are required by law or regulation) that may provide a level of compensation, although the total relief will vary depending on the vehicle involved. Among those are the Changes Clause (and Changes-like Clauses), the Stop Work and Suspension of Clauses. There are differences in the levels of relief each provides, so where employed, the government’s selection of a particular relief-granting clause is important, where the government determines that some relief is warranted.

Given the dynamic and worldwide nature of this entire situation and the very real and dramatic effects on every aspect of our economy, early attention to these steps are essential to the prevention of greater difficulty as these events develop.