The VA National Cemetery Administration (NCA) operates 155 national cemeteries and 34 soldiers' lots across the United States and Puerto Rico, totaling more than 23,000 acres of sacred ground. The cemeteries serve as the final resting place for service members, veterans, and eligible family members. The standard of groundskeeping at an NCA facility is, by policy and by tradition, higher than at almost any other federal property. The grass is uniformly cut. The headstones are uniformly aligned and trimmed. The grounds are quiet, dignified, and immaculate every day, year-round.
For grounds contractors, working at a national cemetery is both an honor and an exacting performance standard. This article walks through what the NCA expects, how Service Contract Act (SCA) wage determinations apply, how invoicing actually works under the federal payment systems, and what A5N Prime has learned operating in the NCA portfolio.
The NCA Standard: What "Honoring Veterans Through Groundskeeping" Actually Means
The NCA publishes formal national shrine standards that govern how every cemetery is maintained. The standards are not aspirational — they are the performance criteria written into every grounds contract. A summary of the key expectations:
- Turf height. Mowed to a uniform height (typically 2.5 to 3 inches) across the entire cemetery on a defined frequency through the growing season. No skip strips, no missed corners.
- Headstone trimming. Every headstone and every flat marker trimmed clean — by hand or with appropriate equipment — to prevent grass overgrowth at the marker base. Damage to a marker is a serious deficiency.
- Edges and walkways. All edges sharp, walkways swept and clean, no debris from mowing operations left on hardscape.
- Seasonal transitions. Spring greenup, fall cleanup, winter snow removal where applicable — all executed on schedule without waiting for direction.
- Memorial events. Memorial Day and Veterans Day are inviolate. Grounds must be at peak condition for both ceremonies, with extra effort in the weeks leading up. A cemetery that looks bad on Memorial Day is a cemetery whose contractor is in serious trouble.
- Interment coordination. Interments happen daily at most national cemeteries. Grounds operations must coordinate with the cemetery's interment schedule — no mowing or noisy operations near an active committal service.
Service Contract Act Wage Determination
Most NCA grounds contracts are covered by the Service Contract Act (SCA), now formally the Service Contract Labor Standards under the McNamara-O'Hara Service Contract Act of 1965. SCA requires that contractors pay covered workers no less than the prevailing wage and fringe benefit rates determined by the Department of Labor for the locality where the work is performed.
The applicable wage determination is incorporated into the contract by reference. For grounds maintenance work, the typical labor categories are landscape laborer, equipment operator, irrigation specialist, and pesticide applicator, each with a separate hourly base wage and a health and welfare (H&W) fringe rate. SCA fringe is currently $4.93 per hour for most non-EO 13706 contracts (subject to annual DOL updates) — a meaningful component of total labor cost that the bidder must price into the contract.
Compliance burden
SCA compliance requires:
- Posting the wage determination on site where workers can see it.
- Paying at least the prevailing wage and fringe for each labor category, every pay period.
- Maintaining certified payroll records, often submitted weekly through the wage and hour office or directly to the contracting officer.
- Tracking labor by category to demonstrate that the right rate was paid for the right work.
Contractors who treat SCA casually — paying minimum wage instead of the prevailing rate, failing to fund the fringe through health insurance or cash supplement — get caught by Department of Labor audits. The consequences are back-wage liability, contract termination, and debarment.
Federal Invoice Processing (IPP)
NCA pays contractors through the federal Invoice Processing Platform (IPP), increasingly via the Treasury's Invoice Processing Platform (IPP). Contractors must register with Treasury IPP, configure their accounts to receive PO data, submit invoices electronically against contract line items, and reconcile remittance advice through Treasury's Direct Deposit / SAM-registered EFT process.
For a small business, getting the invoicing right is as important as getting the field work right. An invoice that doesn't match the contract line items, the period of performance, or the contract modifications gets rejected by IPP and held until corrected. Holds of 30-60 days are common for messy invoicing. Cash flow on multi-year recurring grounds work depends on monthly invoicing being clean and on time.
Year-Round Performance: What "Recurring" Really Means
A multi-year grounds contract at a national cemetery is not a seasonal job. It is a year-round, every-week relationship with the cemetery director, the foreman, and the local NCA region office. The contractor's crew becomes a fixture on the property. The vehicles, the equipment, the supervisor — they are part of the daily operation of the cemetery for the duration of the contract.
That relationship is the contract. Option-year extensions hinge on whether the cemetery director would prefer to keep the current contractor than re-bid the work. CPARS ratings hinge on whether the foreman speaks well of the contractor when the regional office checks in. A reliable contractor who shows up, listens, and delivers will accumulate a body of trust that compounds over time.
A5N Prime's NCA Portfolio
A5N Prime LLC performs recurring grounds maintenance at multiple VA National Cemetery facilities. The firm's most recent NCA award is a five-year trim and edge contract at Massachusetts National Cemetery in Bourne, MA, with performance beginning July 2026. A5N Prime also has a history at the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell, FL, where sod installation work was performed under SDVOSB set-aside.
A5N Prime's NCA approach is the same as its broader federal grounds approach: local W-2 crew, company-owned equipment, proactive communication with the cemetery director, and disciplined SCA payroll and IPP invoicing from day one. Multi-year contracts with the NCA are won at the bid table but kept in the field, week after week, year after year.
For more on A5N Prime's federal grounds capabilities and past performance, see our capabilities and past performance. To discuss a teaming or subcontracting opportunity at an NCA facility, contact us.