Chapter 6 › III. Applicant (Force Account) Labor

How does FEMA pay for our employees’ time, and what records do we need?

FEMA term

Force account labor

Short answer

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.

What FEMA requires

Benefits must be provided under established written policies. Eligible fringe can include holiday, sick and vacation leave accrual, Social Security and Medicare matching, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, retirement, and health, life and disability insurance.
Calculate fringe as a percentage of the hourly pay rate, separately for regular time and overtime.

Documentation

Small projects: an itemized summary with the number of employees, total budgeted and unbudgeted hours, and average regular and overtime rates with fringe. Averages may be used only for employees at similar pay grades and the same employee category.
Large projects: your pay policy plus, for each employee, name, employee type, job title and function, dates and hours worked, pay and fringe rates, a description of the work with daily logs, timesheets, and fringe calculations.

Source: PAPPG Table 10.

Watch out · Govstar practitioner advice

FEMA may review a sample rather than every record, so every timesheet in the file needs to hold up.

Govstar summarizes FEMA’s Public Assistance Program and Policy Guide in plain language and links to the official text. Govstar is independent and not affiliated with FEMA. This is general guidance, not legal advice.