JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas -- (Aug. 3, 2017) To achieve a high state of readiness, Mission and Installation Contracting Command-Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, contracting professionals created acquisition management plans to keep their customers involved in the acquisition process and assure their ability to sustain operations.
MICC-Fort McCoy leaders use acquisition management plans to assist with managing the workload; a plan developed by the contracting staff. The plan calls for the customer's managers and key staff members who are routinely involved in the acquisition process to be advised of the status of their procurement actions in monthly AMP meetings between the contracting staff and their supported activities.
"We must shape our organization for efficiency, and ensure our workforce is positioned with the right people in the right positions," said Mary Purpus, the director of MICC-Fort McCoy. "Our efforts must be focused on procuring the requirements of our customers. Without procuring some of the basic services we contract for them, training and mission readiness would suffer.
"We meet once a month with our customers to ensure timely completion of our contract actions by working closely with them to ensure that their requirements are being awarded in a timely manner, legally, for a fair and reasonable price and to the satisfaction of our customers," Purpus said.
On a quarterly basis, the Fort McCoy installation hosts an acquisition management/financial management forum at which all garrison directors and the contracting office leadership discuss fiscal year end strategies to posture for the potential of receiving additional funding and identify trends for the next fiscal year to ensure meeting the customer's mission requirements.
"My responsibilities include coordinating with customers to ensure their requirements are being awarded by the contracting staff, and that any issues with contracts are resolved as quickly as possible," Purpus said.
MICC-Fort McCoy supports readiness by issuing contract actions to purchase commodities and services, and award construction contracts. The contracting office consists of 37 contracting personnel, working in four divisions -- mission support pre-award services, mission support post-award services, installation support and business operations. The divisions manage requirements for repairing and maintaining facilities and training ranges, ensuring vehicles are serviced and maintained, and the Army Community Services programs.
In fiscal 2016, those divisions obligated nearly $84 million, executing 1,380 contract actions.
The primary MICC-Fort McCoy customers are the Fort McCoy installation and its tenant organizations, the 88th Regional Support Command whose operation spans a 19-state region, the 63rd RSC whose operation spans a seven-state region, Fort Hunter Liggett, California, and Parks Reserve Force Training Area, California.
MICC-Fort McCoy staff work with their supported agencies to identify requirements and discuss workload capabilities so the agencies can collaborate on the prioritization of their requirements. This partnership planning with supported activities helps prepare the office to accomplish its customers' funding obligation rates to meet 80 percent execution by the end of the third quarter and position themselves to take additional funding to be used for task and delivery orders on indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts and obligate remaining requirements before the end of the fiscal year.
MICC-Fort McCoy staff also conducts small business outreach through the use of acquisition open house forums that educate contractors on how to do business with the federal government and provides information on the services, construction, and commodities required by the installation.
Lynn Herrman is a MICC-Fort McCoy contracting officer who leads the mission support pre-award services division, states that her section works on service requirements for the installation, 88th RSC, 63rd RSC, FHL and PRFTA, handling everything from grounds maintenance and custodial services to yellow ribbons and large logistics support contracts.
"All of our customers are our most important customers," Herrman said. "The support we provide them starts before they have their requirement fully developed. The customer may contact us with an idea or a concept of what they need and we help them form it into a requirement to ensure they truly get the services they need."
To ensure requirements are being met, the MICC-Fort McCoy quality assurance specialist is tasked to oversee that contractors are performing the services they were contracted to provide.
Jeremy Berlin, the QAS at Fort McCoy, works with contracting officer's representatives regularly to ensure contract performance objectives are being met. CORs monitor contractor performance through quality assurance surveillance plans that Berlin helps them develop. The QAS also assists CORs with compliance audits. These audits are performed to ensure contracts provide outcomes that meet the intent of their supported commanders to the end of the product or service life cycle and support MICC headquarters metrics.
"Every day we are working to make sure our Soldiers are getting the services they need to support their readiness," Berlin said. "If we don't take care of their needs, then it becomes a distraction. It's a distraction they can ill afford when maintaining readiness."
In the end, it's the MICC-Fort McCoy contracting staff who continue to provide Soldiers and civilians with the best equipment and services available, and enable commanders to achieve their objectives to sustain a ready posture.
The MICC is made up of two contracting support brigades and two field directorate offices responsible for 31 subordinate contracting activities across the United States and Puerto Rico. The command consists of about 1,500 military and civilian members who are responsible for contracting goods and services in support of Soldiers as well as readying trained contracting units for the operating force and contingency environment when called upon. Headquartered at JBSA-Fort Sam Houston, MICC contracts are vital in feeding more than 200,000 Soldiers every day, providing many daily base operations support services at installations, preparing more than 100,000 conventional force members annually, training more than 500,000 students each year, and maintaining more than 14.4 million acres of land and 170,000 structures.
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