Agency delivers absolute value to Defense contracting

Photo By Thomas Perry | After last year’s Senate confirmation as the next director of Defense Contract Management Agency, Navy Vice Adm. David Lewis used his 38-plus years of military experience to craft his new commander’s intent.  

FORT LEE, VA, UNITED STATES

12.21.2018

Story by Thomas Perry 

Defense Contract Management Agency

After last year’s Senate confirmation as the next director of Defense Contract Management Agency, Navy Vice Adm. David Lewis used his 38-plus years of military experience to craft his new commander’s intent.
With his most recent leadership role atop the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command fresh in his mind, Lewis’ three-tiered guide to organizational success focused on delivery, best value and fluidity.

“DCMA was built to be the most efficient, effective and affordable way to deliver Department of Defense warfighting equipment manufactured by our industry counterparts,” said Lewis, citing his second tenet of intent. “If we are not always the most efficient, effective and affordable provider, there is no need for DCMA.”

As one of Lewis’ commanders, Army Col. Jeffrey Caldwell is charged with implementing strategies and initiatives that afford his acquisition professionals at DCMA Huntsville, Alabama, a clear path toward delivering best value to customers, American taxpayers and, ultimately, warfighters.
In the best of circumstances, it is a challenging mission to navigate the intricate world of defense industrial base contracting. Like many DCMA locations however, Huntsville’s challenges are elevated by distance and program variance.

The northern Alabama workforce provides contract management services throughout Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. Its area of responsibility covers approximately 140,767 square miles, 580 active facilities and 8,100 DoD, NASA and Department of Homeland Security contracts valued at more than $35 billion.
Caldwell champions the agency’s capabilities model, his team’s pride in the stewardship of taxpayer dollars and a collective commonality within its workload partnerships as keys to mission success.

“The capabilities model is a major driver to finding ways to be more effective and efficient,” said Caldwell. “It also allows us to provide critical functions and services that helps to manage cost, schedule and performance, which is important to all stakeholders. We overcome our challenges by working as one team and as a whole of government with other strategic partners. It comes down to a simple approach, communication, collaboration and coordination to achieve common objectives.”

Those objectives can change daily depending on location and which program support team is involved. Some of Huntsville’s responsibilities include:
• Major Program Support for the Integrated Battle Command System software contract for Army Integrated Air and Missile Defense.
• Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, ballistic missile defense system.
• Targets and countermeasures.
• Small business support for a diverse group of high-volume contracts.

With such a comprehensive portfolio, leadership works diligently to relay the importance of best value.
“It provides our military and other government agencies we support a competitive advantage, whether it’s fighting on the front lines or providing capabilities to our nation, delivering best value allows the U.S. to be decisive in its quest to provide global leadership,” said Caldwell.

For Martha Walker, DCMA Huntsville’s THAAD quality assurance supervisor, her team’s value stems from its ability to prioritize workload management.

“We use a risk-based approach to perform our quality assurance surveillance activities,” said Walker. “By using this approach we can focus our efforts in areas of higher risk by freeing up resources and reducing time spent on low-risk areas across the entire program.”

The targets and countermeasures program provides unarmed targets designed to represent adversary missiles and ensure realistic testing. It is a vital program given the world’s current ballistic climate. It also benefits from risk determination. Joseph Buscemi, a quality assurance specialist at the DCMA Huntsville Courtland office, said his team’s risk determination provides value “that is relevant to the customers’ requirements of asset performance.”

He explained that because of the program’s high op-tempo every bit of time saved can make an impact.
“There are hundreds of tests performed to integrate a target so that all stakeholders in the one shot chance to acquire and kill a target missile is a success,” said Buscemi. “By working to support the successful delivery of target systems, we are actually supporting the success of all ballistic missile defense systems. This country’s missile defense system enhancements cannot be appropriately demonstrated without the target assets being integrated and delivered on the contracts that we support.”

In a literal cosmic job in program size but not importance, Lee Precision in Athens, Alabama, is a small business that provides a wide array of products in support of government contracts.

Ken Knight, a lead quality assurance specialist, who supports those contracts said DCMA Huntsville personnel have supported more than 100 regional small business facilities, and he expects that number to grow as the area continues to expand “as an industry boomtown.” While the dollars and facilities may shrink in size, the best value mission looms just as large in Knight’s mind.

“Lee Precision continually produces and manufactures an extremely large amount of complex and technical products for the government,” said Knight. “Just to provide oversight and keep up with documentation for the amount of product produced is an accomplishment in itself. Lee Precision produces intricate and technical parts that all have critical safety requirements or specialized applications. The workload is tremendous, challenging and very frequent.

“These parts that are manufactured in the little old town of Athens are shipped worldwide for all branches of the DoD and placed on some of the most technologically advanced equipment in the world. We continuously work to improve the procurement process with all major buying commands and all major agencies within the United States government.”

According to Army Maj. Brian Moran, DCMA Huntsville’s Army Integrated Air and Missile Defense program integrator, the warfighter and American taxpayer have directly benefited from Huntsville’s implementation of a detection to prevention methodology that saves dollars and supports on-time delivery.

“Huntsville uses efficiency, effectiveness and affordability to deliver value to the warfighter by utilizing detection to prevention methods and enforcing DoD and DCMA policy to ensure the contractors are providing efficient and effective delivery of warfighter products,” said Moran. “Additionally, the independent assessments that the team provides to senior DoD leaders allows them to make informed decisions, demands efficient process improvements, and ensures the contractors are delivering efficient, effective and affordable products to the warfighter.”

Efficiency, effectiveness and affordability are all products of Lewis’ best value blueprint. Like he said, if his team cannot deliver on these principles there is no reason for his agency’s existence. Based on the feedback and performances of the acquisition professionals from a Northern Alabama boomtown, who work with giant missiles and minor precisions, the organization’s windows will not be shuttered anytime soon.

“I have traveled around quite a bit, worked for several different government agencies in Europe and in the U.S., and I could not be prouder of the scope of work we perform here in Huntsville,” said Knight. “Our team is fully supported by our command, management and all of the professionals of Huntsville. I take a lot of pride in what we do, but that is a direct reflection of my director, my first line supervisor and the best quality assurance team I have ever been associated with in my entire career. We touch so many programs, every commodity, from small glide munitions to U.S. flags flying over the capital.”

• Date Taken: 12.21.2018
• Date Posted: 12.21.2018 11:09
• Story ID: 304816
• Location: FORT LEE, VA, US