Photo By Kristen Bergeson | Subject matter experts from the U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville,...... read more read more
HUNTSVILLE, Ala.—Subject matter experts from the U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville, joined other U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Redstone Arsenal and Small Business Administration personnel to participate in the Society of American Military Engineers (SAME) Huntsville Post’s virtual Small Business Forum Oct. 20.
Hundreds of participants, mostly small business owners and business representatives from across the country, logged in to learn about Huntsville Center’s more than 40 programs and upcoming acquisitions.
Col. Sebastien P. Joly, Huntsville Center commander, provided an overview of the Center’s unique mission and highlighted the technical expertise of its workforce.
“We are the Corps of Engineers’ one-stop shop for solving technical problems around the globe, and we pride ourselves on our subject-matter expertise that allows us to come up with the best possible solutions to the nation’s toughest challenges,” he said.
The Huntsville Center team includes 115 professional engineers, 51 project management professionals, 21 contracting officers holding warrants valued at $500 million or higher, 17 registered architects, 24 registered interior designers, and more. Twenty of these experts hold doctoral degrees in their respective fields.
“This is really indicative of the expertise we find at the Center and what allows us to be the subject matter experts in many cases for the Department of the Army,” said Joly.
Colleen O’Keefe, Huntsville Center chief of contracting, emphasized the importance of partnering with industry.
“As the pandemic has shown us, we cannot do this alone,” she said. “It takes all of us, all of our industry partners and the government to solve these problems. We’re asking small businesses to reach out to the larger ones, reach out to our Small Business Office, to market yourself and work with us so we can match you with projects.”
Huntsville Center is committed to involving small businesses, said O’Keefe. In fact, many contracts require that large contractors maximize opportunities for small businesses to participate as subcontractors.
The Center exceeded all of its small business goals for fiscal year 2021, awarding 43 percent—over $700 million—of its total contracts to small businesses.
Due to the success of the interactive roundtable discussions offered for the first time during the 2020 Small Business Forum, virtual attendees once again had the opportunity to get a closer look at individual programs via breakout sessions with Huntsville Center and other USACE program managers and contracting specialists.
These sessions focused on energy; electronic technology; facilities and facility technology; military support; medical facility architectural and engineering contracts; ordnance and explosives; safety and pre-award contracting.
A video recording of the main session will be available by Friday, Oct. 22, at https://www.samehsvpost.org.
To learn more about Huntsville Center’s partnership with small businesses, visit the Small Business Office’s website at https://www.hnc.usace.army.mil/Business-With-Us/Small-Business/Small-Business-Office-Marketing-Guide/.
Huntsville Center’s more than 1,000 employees manage nearly 3,000 ongoing projects at any given time. These projects fall into five portfolios: Medical, Facilities and Base Operations, Energy, Operational Technology, and Environmental. The portfolios comprise 43 program areas, as well as eight mandatory and six technical centers of expertise, and 17 centers of standardization. Projects are generally broad in scope, require specialized technical expertise, centralized management or are functions not normally accomplished by a Headquarters, USACE organizational element. To learn more about Huntsville Center’s programs, visit https://www.hnc.usace.army.mil/Media/Fact-Sheets/.
| Date Taken: | 10.20.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 10.20.2021 14:52 |
| Story ID: | 407634 |
| Location: | HUNTSVILLE, AL, US |
| Web Views: | 128 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Huntsville Center showcases programs, capabilities during small business forum, by Kristen Bergeson, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
LEAVE A COMMENT