Technical committee profile: Committee on Government Business.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: FeiNEWS

In times of war or peace, the major U.S. government contractors have huge programs in place and are constantly interacting with the various branches of government. On the finance side, the contractors find a series of ever-changing rules and policies coming from the agencies and from Congress.

To help sort it out, there's FEI's Committee on Government Business (CGB). Technically, CGB is the representative for the business community on government regulatory and oversight matters for all businesses large, small, public, private, colleges and universities and other not-for-profit organizations. But its principal focus has been defense contractors, with members drawn from a literal roll-call of the largest defense contractors, like Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Electric, General Dynamics and Bechtel.

Committee member companies are constantly seeking to understand new mandates or rules impacting government contractors--such as rules stipulating that no work can shift from the government to the private sector unless substantial savings would be realized.

The special nature of the government relationship with CGB tends to set the committee, formed in 1963, apart from its FEI counterparts. "As FEI committees go, they are a bit different," says Mark Prysock, FEI's Director of Public Affairs and staff liaison to the CGB. "Their primary customer is the federal government."

Committee Chairman William Romenius, Director of International Business Compliance for the Boeing Co., notes that the 21 members are "comprised of a good cross-section of talent, including CFOs, senior directors/managers and subject matter experts." Romenius also notes that since anyone doing business with the government is impacted by its procurement rules, it behooves companies large or small, and non-profits with substantial government business, to participate in the CGB.

Like most other technical committees, the group meets quarterly, with three meetings in the Washington area and one on the West Coast each year.

Romenius, who has been on the committee since the late 1990s and began supporting it as a non-member in 1986, emphasizes that the meetings provide a platform for hearing directly from senior agency officials, Presidential appointees and Congressional staffers, and serve as an introduction for a CGB member to meet subsequently with the government official to discuss a company issue.

At the committee's February meeting, for instance, members heard...