The Association of the U.S. Army has selected Michael Hutchison, deputy to the Army Contracting Command commanding general, to receive its 5th AUSA region: 5th Region Civilian Exceptional Service Award.
The announcement was made at the AUSA Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, DC on October 23.
Though Hutchison was unable to attend the award ceremony, he commented that he was "truly honored to receive this award because it recognizes the hard work and dedication of the ACC-Rock Island contracting center team."
Reflecting on his former position as executive director of ACC's Rock Island, Ill. contracting center, ACC-RI, Ill., he said the center "does extensive work is support of operations in Southwest Asia, the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, reachback support to troops on the ground, plus all of the ammo we bought. It also recognizes the work we did to build ACC-RI into the center it is today."
Hutchison said ACC-RI is 2.5 times larger and does seven times the work today compared to 2002, when he arrived. He also worked closely with the Quad City Chamber of Commerce and the Rock Island Development Group.
The Rock Island Arsenal chapter of the AUSA nominated Hutchison as its 2012-13 Department of the Army civilian of the year. The main criteria for this award included service not only to the Army but also to the local community, according to his nominator, Kerry Skinner, Rock Island AUSA chapter 5102.
Skinner said Hutchison executed his duties as executive director in an exemplary manner, but his work with organizations such as Women in Defense, National Defense Industrial Association, and the National Contract Management Association were also recognized.
The award has five executive core qualifications: leading change, leading people, results driven, business acumen, and building coalitions. According to the nomination, Hutchison had strong examples of success in each.
In leading change, the most notable was his creation of the Rock Island contracting center Reachback Division that entailed moving poor-quality contracts in Kuwait to an office in the states capable of handling the workload while keeping a liaison on ground. He was also instrumental in achieving more diversity in the workforce, doubling minority representation in two years.
The nomination described Hutchison as results driven and described how he provided Army Materiel Command with a simple, three-step process to improve quality within the center and followed through each step in order. Concerning business acumen, another issue of workforce crisis was age and retirement eligibility.
He began hiring interns immediately, finding money from a variety of sources, personally hiring more than 40 interns over a 2 year period of time. Today, the interns he brought to ACC-RI comprise almost 30 percent of its workforce.
Hutchison's nomination also cited him for building coalitions with local organizations and other Army and joint organizations.
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