Force Account Labor & Equipment

Eligible: mud and water removal, mold remediation, bracing and sandbagging, demolition for an immediate threat, safety placarding inspections, earthquake frame evaluations, and repair or replacement of buildings, equipment and vehicles to pre-disaster condition. Not eligible: mold from poor maintenance, unneeded slab removal, code and substantial-damage inspections, extra capacity for growth, and ADA fixes you were already cited for.

Yes. Repairing damaged equipment or replacing destroyed items with the same number of comparable items (similar age, condition and capacity) is eligible. If replacement costs less than repair, FEMA pays the replacement cost.

FEMA doesn’t pay for donations, but their value can offset your non-federal cost share. For debris and emergency protective measures, the offset applies across all those projects; for permanent work, only to the project the donation supported.

When FEMA-funded equipment or supplies are no longer needed, you may owe FEMA its share of what is left if the value is $10,000 or more. Local governments and nonprofits can first move equipment to other federally funded programs if they tell FEMA.

Yes, based on the terms of the rental agreement, provided you compared renting with buying and the rental didn’t cost more than buying and maintaining the equipment over the project.

FEMA uses either its national Schedule of Equipment Rates or your government’s own rates, depending on which applies and which is lower. FEMA’s rates already include fuel and maintenance, so those can’t be claimed on top.

FEMA pays an hourly rate for the time your equipment is actually operating on eligible work, including permanently mounted generators. Vehicles can be paid by documented mileage if that costs less. If you had to buy equipment to respond, FEMA can fund the purchase plus either the hourly rate or actual fuel and maintenance.

Only for life-saving work. FEMA covers intermittent standby time for staff conducting evacuation or sheltering, search and rescue, or emergency medical care, when all of its criteria are met.

Hourly premium pay can be eligible; bonuses are not. Call-back pay, night and weekend differentials and hazardous duty pay for essential employees doing eligible emergency work can be covered when paid under a qualifying pre-disaster labor policy.

Usually not. Second-level supervisors and above, such as commissioners, mayors, department directors and police and fire chiefs, are normally exempt from federal overtime rules, so FEMA treats their overtime as ineligible unless three conditions are all met.

Yes. Regular hours for essential employees called back from a budget-related furlough because of the declared incident are eligible, as long as those costs were not budgeted.

Some of it. Backfill costs are eligible when the regular employee is away doing eligible emergency work, even though the backfill employee isn’t. Which hours count depends on who does the backfilling.

Costs for employees reassigned to work outside their normal duties are eligible at their normal pay rate, not the rate for the work they did. A police officer clearing debris is paid at the officer’s rate.

It depends on the type of work. For permanent work (Categories C–G), FEMA pays both regular and overtime hours. For emergency work (Categories A–B), FEMA generally pays only overtime for employees already in your budget, but pays both regular and overtime hours for unbudgeted staff.

Yes. FEMA decides which labor costs are eligible based on the written labor policy you had in place before the disaster. If your policy doesn’t meet FEMA’s three conditions, FEMA pays only your standard, uniformly applied pay rates.

FEMA reimburses your employees’ actual hourly pay plus the actual cost of their fringe benefits, calculated as a percentage of the hourly rate. Overtime usually carries a different fringe percentage than regular time, because some benefits, such as health insurance, don’t depend on hours worked.

2 CFR 200.403

44 CFR 206.228

Under PAPPG v5, the "Force Account" concept requires a structured blueprint to distinguish self-performed disaster costs from normal operational expenses. FEMA reimburses based on the audit-readiness of documentation, not good faith, meaning a lack of itemized trails leads to permanent funding denials. To secure recovery funds, applicants must use a four-stage compliance lifecycle—Qualify, Deploy, Document, Dispose—where the pre-disaster "Qualify" stage serves as the vital bedrock.

The strategic management of force account resources—an applicant’s own personnel, equipment, and inventory—is the primary determinant of success in a FEMA Public Assistance (PA) grant audit. For Grant Managers and CFOs, accurate force account accounting is not merely a bookkeeping exercise but a high-stakes compliance requirement to secure and retain federal funding. This guide details the rigorous standards for Force Account Labor , including the necessity of pre-disaster policies; Equipment usage, where rates and maintenance exclusions must be precisely managed; Materials and Supplies acquisition; and the often-overlooked

Force account claims can be won or lost before the disaster begins. This Govstar resource explains how FEMA PA applicants can protect reimbursement for their own labor, equipment, materials, and supplies through compliant pre-disaster policies and strong documentation. Topics include labor policy requirements, straight-time vs. overtime eligibility, budgeted and unbudgeted staff, Categories A–G, management costs, fringe benefits, timesheets, backfill, reassigned personnel, standby rules, equipment rate hierarchies, leased equipment, materials from stock, disposition rules, and audit risks.

Building and equipment eligibility is where FEMA PA applicants prove that damaged facilities, contents, and emergency actions are tied to the disaster—not pre-existing issues or modernization. This Govstar resource explains how to protect Category B and Category E reimbursement through compliant scopes, inspections, and documentation. Topics include EHP laws, NEPA/NHPA triggers, water/debris/mold remediation, private property work, stabilization, safety inspections, welded steel moment frames, pre-disaster design/function, repair vs. replacement, PHA/HUD overlap, ADA, floodplain rules, contents and records, no-modernization limits, equivalent-item caps, and audit-ready compliance checks. **Character count:** ~699 characters.

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