Photo By Stacey Reese | Diane Cianci and her husband enjoyed her retirement ceremony, held at the Tulsa...... read more read more
The Tulsa District Corps of Engineers power team bid adieux to its last remaining original member with the official retirement of Diane Cianci in January. Cianci had been a member of the team since 1986. As a contract specialist Diane supported FEMA, ensuring work orders were complete and the contractors fulfilled their contract.
Diane began her career in government service with the Defense Logistics Agency in September of 1981, later changing agencies and coming to work for Tulsa District USACE. She started her career in government service as a secretary and worked her way up to procurement tech, lead processing tech and finally to a contract specialist.
During her years with the power team, Cianci deployed approximately 30 times to areas throughout the United States as well as Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands as a contract specialist, working closely with other power team members as well as state and local government contacts.
Texoma area admin, Brande Serner deployed with Cianci twice. According to Serner, both times, were extremely long and unique emergency deployments. During Hurricane Sandy, they were lodging on Times Square in NYC after Hurricane Sandy and driving our rental cars to the Bronx every day to our mission location, leaving in the dark and coming back in the dark.
Serner says “Diane was a Yankee herself, she was our "interpreter" in New York. Diane could communicate with everyone easily and made the mission fun even though we were extremely stressed out.”
“Deploying for disasters was the most rewarding part of my job” said Cianci. “I loved working with other agencies in order to get a job done that was so important to so many people.”
To Cianci, the contract was only a small part of the task. The main job for her was ensuring power was restored as rapidly as possible to provide much needed help to areas ravaged by disaster, thus helping to return some semblance of normalcy to an extremely chaotic situation.
“I greatly appreciated Diane's knowledge and experience she brought with her when we deployed together” said BJ Parkey, power team mission manager. “I could always depend on Diane to know her position and teach me about things I didn't know about administering the contract. I will truly miss having Diane as a part of our power team.”
Her untiring efforts greatly contributed to the successful accomplishment of the Corps mission during the 2017 hurricane season. The efforts did not go unnoticed as Cianci was given the Civilian Award for Humanitarian Service for her power team work during that time period.
Contracting officer, Brian Hutchison said “Without question, Diane made a significant contribution and positive impact on Tulsa District and I truly admire her tireless efforts and dedication to our mission over the years.”
Cianci’s time as a contracting officer predates what reports can pull. Numbers since 2006 show how instrumental she was to the mission of Tulsa District. From 2006 to her retirement, she obligated $823,131,805 as a contracting officer.
Actions touched by her ranged from architect and engineering services, military and civil construction and hydropower. She served at some point in time on every program the district has currently.
To put her numbers into perspective, you can take the $800M and divide it by the average cost of a house in Tulsa, she would have purchased the equivalent of 6,700 homes.
| Date Taken: | 02.05.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 02.05.2020 14:38 |
| Story ID: | 361837 |
| Location: | TULSA, OKLAHOMA, US |
| Web Views: | 48 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, Deployment dame bids farewell to government service after 40 years, by Stacey Reese, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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