10 U.S.C. § 8669a — Construction of combatant and escort vessels and assignment of vessel projects

(a) When the Navy assigns projects to convert, alter, or repair its vessels, it must base those decisions on economic and military factors. The Navy isn't allowed to follow a rule that certain kinds of shipwork must always go to a particular type of shipyard, a particular geographic region, or anything similar — the assignment has to be based on merit, not built-in favoritism.

(b) When the Navy compares bids or proposals for a contract to overhaul, repair, or maintain a vessel, it sometimes considers work that would happen away from where the ship is normally based (its "homeport"). In figuring out the true cost of that option, the Navy must include the foreseeable cost of moving the ship and its crew out to that other location and then back home again once the work is done.

(c) Before asking companies to bid on a short-term repair, overhaul, or maintenance job, the Navy must first determine whether there is adequate competition among firms able to perform the work at the vessel's homeport. If there is adequate competition among those firms, the Navy must limit its request for bids to firms able to perform the work at the homeport, and it can't award the contract to any firm that won't actually do the work at the homeport. This homeport-first rule overrides subsection (a) and any other law that might otherwise apply. It doesn't apply, though, to "voyage repairs" — repairs done while a ship is out on a trip. And it only covers "short-term work," meaning jobs expected to take 18 months or less; longer jobs aren't covered by this homeport-first rule.