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There are many opportunities available for those who want to work overseas as civilian employees or contractors. However, with those opportunities come unique risks that need to be adequately prepared for and understood before signing the dotted line on your employment contract. Still, even if you’ve already signed and are aware of the risks, you should make the necessary preparations in case anything should happen to you while working overseas.

Understanding your contract

Whether you’ve already signed on the dotted line or not, you need to review your employment contract carefully. The contract contains the terms of your employment, and it may include a section on liability for both the contract company and yourself. You need to know where your liability begins and where the liability of your contract employer ends. Knowing this information before you suffer an accident/injury could help in your case should your employer be liable for medical costs and compensation.

Along with your contract, you should also review any safety guidelines and job responsibilities. Both of these guides are intended to help keep you safe and make sure that you do not work outside your contract. Again, knowing this information will help prevent any injury. However, there is no amount of precaution you can take while working in a war zone that will protect you from war hazards like IED explosions, rocket attacks, etc. Aside from those specific war hazards, other more common accidents do happen, regardless of how careful you are and well you follow the guidelines. This might include a trip and fall accident, etc. Should you get injured while fulfilling your contract duties, you should be eligible for compensation benefits. If you become injured because you were not following safety guidelines or you were performing work outside your contract scope, your workers’ compensation insurance carrier could dispute your claim for compensation on those grounds. Knowing this information protects you and your rights should the worse happen. However, under the Defense Base Act (DBA), you should be covered so long as you are in the “zone of special danger” even if you are not working when injured.

Understand the risk you are taking

Overseas contracting jobs are not the same as civilian jobs in the United States. Even if you are a civilian working on military bases, your job presents risks that are unique and need to be understood fully. Risks to personal safety are especially high in hot spots such as a war zone or ground zero for a natural disaster. If you’re a security contractor, you’ll be at the same risk as a soldier stationed in such areas as Afghanistan or Iraq. Although performing different duties, both military and civilian contractors often have the same types of risks if they work in the same area.

Before you sign your contract or before you leave for your post, you need to review these risks and dangers carefully and take the necessary precautions to protect yourself. This is especially important if you have loved ones that you are leaving: review life insurance policies, wills, death benefits, and injury benefits. Make sure that both you and your spouse or children, and qualified dependents, know what to do should the worst happen to you.

You should also ask yourself if you’re prepared to manage those risks of danger, and also how to prepare. Does your contract employer have guidelines? Can you speak with other contractors and find out how they prepared? If something should happen to you, have you prepared your loved ones?

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Once the security package is received by the Office of Personnel Security and Suitability, it will be reviewed for completeness, and the information will be formally entered into a case management system. National agency record checks and scanned fingerprint checks are then conducted. A case manager will direct the background investigation to cover key events and contacts from the individual’s past and present history.

A critical step in the background investigation is the face-to-face interview the individual will have with a DS investigator. This interview usually occurs within a few weeks of an individual submitting a complete security clearance package.

DS investigators are located in the United States and overseas. These investigators verify the information an individual has supplied in his or her security package, such as where he or she has lived, gone to school, and worked. Investigators talk to current and former neighbors, supervisors, co-workers, and classmates, as well as to the references an individual provided. Investigators also contact law enforcement agencies in each of the places an individual has lived, worked, or attended school.

Once the investigators have completed a report, highly trained security clearance adjudicators will weigh the results against existing adjudicative guidelines for security clearances.

Most individuals will be granted a security clearance, although complicating factors or derogatory findings may delay a decision or result in a denial of security clearance.

THE INTERIM SECURITY CLEARANCE

In exceptional circumstances, the hiring office may request an interim security clearance. The Office of Personnel Security and Suitability may be able to grant an interim security clearance within a few weeks after the individual has submitted a complete security package. Final clearances usually are processed and adjudicated in less than 90 days.

THE PERIODIC RE-INVESTIGATION

Security clearances are subject to periodic reinvestigation every 5 years. The Office of Personnel Security and Suitability notifies the individual when it is time for their reinvestigation. The individual will submit an updated security package and another background investigation will be conducted. The investigation will again cover key aspects of the individual’s life but will start from one’s previous background investigation.