Recently, the Army Contracting Command-Redstone sponsored a joint panel discussion with the Defense Contract Management Agency and the Defense Contract Audit Agency in the Bob Jones Auditorium for 245 in attendance.

John Mayes, Deputy Executive Director of ACC-RSA, forum host, provided the opening remarks for an open-ended discussion between panel members and ACC-RSA employees, with the goal of defining the roles and responsibilities in the acquisition process. Both agencies conducted briefings, with question-and-answer sessions.

Col. David Hosna, commander of the DCMA southeast region in Huntsville, said that the DCMA mission of actionable acquisition, has three major lines of service which include Quality Assurance, Contract Administration as well as Engineering and Manufacturing positions which accounts for 70 percent of the agency's functions. The DCMA panel which included Beth Stewart, DCMA Huntsville Contracts Director, encouraged ACC-RSA to host post-award conferences and to register in the Classified Baseline Accounting and Reporting System.

DCAA spokesperson, Jeremy Scott, who is a Financial Liaison Advisor, said that the key members of the acquisition team - Technical Evaluators, ACC-RSA Pricing, DCAA and DCMA - all contribute to assisting Contracting Officers with fair and reasonable price determinations. He also reminded the audience that DCAA has to be organizationally independent in accord with Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards as DCAA reports to the Comptroller Undersecretary of Defense.

Scott delivered a "DCAA Services" overview presentation which highlighted requesting pre-award audit services, why DCAA reviews costs, types of pre and post-award audit services, and the services DCAA FLAs provide to the command. DCAA also highlighted the partnership developed with the ACC-RSA Training Center where Redstone FLA's have provided over 25 training sessions in FY 2016 during various training venues such as the Contracting Officer and Developmental Contract Specialist Workshops.

DCAA provided agency-wide statistics and trend data for the audit cycle time when performing Forward Pricing Proposal Audits prompting the following dialogue.

"Has DCAA performed an analysis on the current return on investment as a result of the current average number of days to complete an audit," John Mayes asked?

Jeremy Scott responded, saying that DCAA's quality initiatives over the past several years have led to higher reported questioned costs identified within DCAA audits along with a higher return on investment for the warfighter and taxpayer.

The Commander of DCMA and Director of DCAA both stand firm in supporting ACC-RSA now and in the future.

Mayes presented the leaders of each agency a Certificate of Appreciation which was signed by the Executive Director of ACC-RSA, Ms. Rebecca Weirick.