Government Furnished Property (GFP)

GFP is a subset of PIPC (Property in Possession of Contractor) and consists of government property that has been made available to the contractor in order to perform a contract. Suppliers who hold onto this property in order to fulfill their government contracts are required to communicate to the DoD whenever the property enters or leaves their facilities. This process is usually closely coordinated between property managers and shipping personnel.

Although manual communication of this information has been allowed in the past, new specifications from the DoD are requiring that all GFP data be tracked electronically through the UID Registry. The old submission processed was based off of submitting a manual DoD Form 1662. This new requirement ties GFP closely to the UID processes.

The same basic rules that determine whether a product will be a UID item also apply to GFP. The item has to have a cost value of over five thousand dollars. Items that are less expensive than this are actually classified as LVP (Low Value Property) and do not need to be UID marked and reported to the UID Registry.

The DoD is requiring that all GFP items be UID marked. When GFP items first arrive in the facility, an electronic submission of the GFP items must be sent to the UID Registry. Since all GFPs must be sent to the UID Registry, they all must have the basic information necessary for a UID, such as an enterprise identifier and serial number.

The DoD Registry allows UIDs that don't have a unique UID mark to be submitted as Virtual UIDs. A Virtual UID needs to have a physically identifiably unique mark such as a barcode. This is necessary so that when the physical UID mark is actually created and reported to the UID Registry, the correct serial number will be used. It is expected that a Virtual UID will be physically marked prior to the time in which it is returned to the government.