Your benefits cost is a line in an indirect rate somebody audits.
Aerospace and defense parts manufacturing, machining and assembly, and the maintenance and repair operations around them. What makes benefits different here is not the plan design — it is that on government work the cost of the plan becomes a number you have to justify to somebody else.
Aerospace is not one of the twenty industry sectors the filing data uses; it sits inside manufacturing. It has its own page because almost nothing below is true of manufacturing generally.
Government work changes what the plan has to survive.
What is actually true at an aerospace supplier
- On government contracts your benefits are an allowable cost that has to be reasonable, applied consistently and documented — and it lands in an indirect rate that gets examined.
- Service Contract Act work carries an hourly health and welfare fringe obligation, and bona fide benefits can satisfy it instead of cash, which changes what a richer plan actually costs you.
- Headcount follows programs, not calendars. Winning or losing one moves you across the applicable-large-employer threshold, and that status is measured on the prior calendar year.
- Export-control rules narrow who you are allowed to hire, so turnover is low and tenure is long — which puts the age curve and the Medicare interaction at the center rather than the edge.
What CFH does about it
- Structures the plan so the cost is defensible when the indirect rate is examined, not only competitive on paper.
- Designs contributions so bona fide benefits satisfy the health and welfare obligation on covered work rather than paying it out in cash.
- Runs the look-back against your program calendar, so a hiring year does not become a reporting surprise twelve months later.
- Models the Medicare interaction for a workforce that stays, including employees working past sixty-five.
Four sizes, four different problems.
Find your headcount. What changes at that size in this industry, and what we do about it.
A single shop on subcontract is community-rated and age-banded, and an older, long-tenured crew sits at the wrong end of that band.
What we do about it: Prices the small-group market every year, and keeps the Medicare Part D creditable coverage notice on its own calendar — it applies at any size and matters more with this age profile.
You are an applicable large employer, measured on the prior calendar year — and at this size a single program award is enough to move you across the line.
What we do about it: Runs the look-back against your program calendar and produces the 1095-C data from your time system rather than a headcount.
Claims become credible enough to fund against, and a shop-floor population’s claims concentrate in musculoskeletal injury, imaging and specialty drugs.
What we do about it: Models level-funding and self-funding on your own claims, and keeps the resulting cost defensible where it lands in the rate.
Several plants, often a bargained population at some of them, and a benefits cost allocated across programs rather than sitting in one pool.
What we do about it: Runs the program as one, keeps the allocation method documented, and tells you plainly which levers sit with the trust and which sit with you.
The three things aerospace suppliers ask us first.
Are our benefit costs allowable on government contracts?
Generally yes, where they are reasonable, applied consistently and documented. The exposure is rarely the benefit itself — it is the documentation behind it, so we build the plan to hold up when someone asks.
Can our health plan count toward the Service Contract Act fringe?
Bona fide benefits can satisfy the health and welfare obligation on covered work instead of paying it as cash. Whether that is the better answer depends on your wage base, and we model both before recommending one.
We just won a program and added sixty people. What changes?
Applicable-large-employer status is measured on the prior calendar year, so the obligation arrives the year after the hiring does. We flag it in the year you cross, not the year it bites.
Send us your renewal.
We’ll tell you whether it looks competitive, where we see opportunity, and the five questions we’d put to your carrier. No cost, and no obligation to move anything.
The renewal letter
Your current plan summary
Contribution split by tier
Enrolled counts by tier
Four documents — two more if your group is 50 or more. Nothing else; every extra one is a reason to postpone.
An independent employee benefits consulting firm. We look at the entire benefits program — cost, plan performance, risk and administration.
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