Defense procurement

Defense Business: These Are Nervous Times for Contractors Speaking to a room of government contractors recently, defense officials insisted that there is no witch-hunt. Contrary to industry perception, government overseers are not hammers looking for nails, said Deputy General Counsel for Contractor Responsibility at the Department of the Air Force Rodney A. Grandon. Grandon made a case that contractor policing is changing. The emphasis is not on trying to rack up the numbers of suspensions and debarments, he said, but on working preemptively with companies to make sure they have vigorous ethics and compliance programs.  “The focus today is no longer on numbers. The focus today is on contractor responsibility,” he told a federal procurement conference last month in McLean, Virginia, organized by the consulting firm BDO USA.