JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas -- (May 16, 2016) A panel of military and civilian leaders from across the Army Contracting Command recognized two Soldiers, four civilians and two teams from the Mission and Installation Contracting Command for their professionalism, performance and contributions to the contracting community as this year's ACC annual award winners.
The panel selected the MICC members who exemplify the highest level of performance and service for excellence in non-acquisition, acquisition, contracting and small business career fields throughout the ACC community. Those selected were recognized for their outstanding achievements between Oct. 1, 2014, and Sept. 30, 2015.
Sgt. 1st Class Derrick Wade, a contracting specialist with the 904th Contracting Battalion at Fort Knox, Kentucky, was named Outstanding Contingency Contracting NCO of the Year. While serving as a contingency contracting officer in support of Operation Freedom's Sentinel, Wade made contributions that enhanced mission accomplishment for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan. His efforts were crucial in enabling Soldiers and civilians to build the Afghan National Security Forces capabilities for executing security and stability operations.
"He demonstrated remarkable problem-solving skills, while executing more than 200 actions valued at more than $200 million and provided critical services to 20,000 United States, coalition and Afghan forces in the Bagram Airfield area of operations," said Lt. Col. Mary Drayton, the executive officer to the commander of Expeditionary Contracting Command-Afghanistan. "He was responsible for more than 80 percent of Regional Contracting Center-East's workload."
This year's ACC Outstanding Price Analyst, for other than major weapons system, is Raul Guerra. Guerra is a senior price and cost analyst at the MICC headquarters. As the price and cost subject matter expert for all complex, highly visible and large contract actions at the MICC, Guerra's role spans developing price and cost acquisition strategies and evaluation criteria to serving as lead analyst for developing and/or conducting peer reviews of pre-negotiation objective and price negotiation memoranda for all actions exceeding $100 million. He also develops strategic tools for standardizing and improving price and cost evaluation and documentation resulting in fair and reasonable pricing across MICC procurements.
"Raul directly supported seven major pre-award actions representing $1.78 billion of Army requirements," said Lorraine Massie, a supervisory contract specialist and procurement analyst with the MICC. "Two examples where he contributed to fair and reasonable pricing include fixed-wing flight training and operational environment and core functions. He provided exceptional support across the command leading to improved and sound contract decisions."
As the command began its transformation toward its MICC 2025 Plan, it was difficult to track or show progress. This is when Dean Michalec, a supervisory human resource specialist for MICC headquarters personnel section, stepped in and quickly identified the problem, developed solutions and implemented tools allowing the MICC to set priorities for resource allocation, workload distribution and projection of workforce imbalances and skills gaps. One of his solutions was a visual reference for the commanding general to quickly see staffing levels for each MICC office. He developed a product that is known as the chicklet chart, a graphic chart depicting losses and gains against the MICC 2025 Plan. This chart shows the progress of hiring toward the new MICC 2025 Plan. As a result, his chart has now become the cornerstone of the CG's briefings to outside personnel on transformation and garnered Michalec the Outstanding Mission Support Business Operation (Non-Acquisition) Award for ACC.
"The MICC 2025 Plan will result in the most efficient and effective contracting organization the Army can afford," said Maria Allen, deputy chief of staff for MICC G1. "The benefits are significant, short-term savings of $11.1 million per year with future savings of $17.9 million per year (fiscal 2015 baseline for savings)."
This MICC 2025 Plan gives subordinate commanders greater flexibility in managing workload and increase efficiencies in executing the contracting mission.
Victoria Ghent is the ACC Small Business Specialist of the Year. At MICC-Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, she is responsible for ensuring effective implementation of the Army Small Business Programs while supporting the command.
"She takes full advantage of every opportunity to encourage small business participation," said Mark Massie, director of Small Business Programs for the MICC. "Because of significant budget cuts, she took the initiative to develop and host the MICC-JBLM semi-annual no-cost Acquisition Forecast Open House as a primary method of outreach within the community."
She also filled in as the small business specialist for MICC-Fort Bliss, Texas, for the first six months of fiscal 2015, providing remote support to the staff and their customers.
"We selected her to provide assistance to this office because of her ability to research and identify solutions as MICC-Fort Bliss was struggling with their small business goal achievement," Massie said. "MICC-Fort Bliss ended fiscal 2014 (with a full-time small business specialist) only achieving one of five socioeconomic goals. When she turned over the reins to the new specialist, MICC-Fort Bliss was exceeding all of their socioeconomic goals in fiscal 2015."
Staff Sgt. Reginald Alexander's outstanding leadership and relentless work ethic earned him the Personal Development Achievement Award from ACC. As a contract specialist for the 612th Contracting Team and noncommissioned officer in charge for the Contract Closeout Tiger Team at Fort Hood, Texas, Alexander demonstrated outstanding technical proficiency completing 15 contract actions valued in excess of $1.2 million.
"His ability to quickly grasp the acquisition process by planning, awarding, and administering contracts from cradle-to-grave made him the go-to contract specialist for challenging procurements has been phenomenal," said Lt. Col. Robert Mathews, commander of the 901st Contracting Battalion. "His efforts have been a great attribute to the success of the 901st CBN and MICC-Fort Hood."
As a procurement analyst for the MICC, Wiley Cox provided outstanding services to the command and ACC this year as he was named the Innovation Award winner. He embraced his role and was determined to utilize commercial technology to create tools that would have impact on contracting efficiency and improving document quality. Cox taught himself Adobe Life Cycle Designer and JavaScript coding capabilities to create, make edits and update forms as needed.
"He surpassed a MICC goal of simplifying the documentation of acquisition strategies and simplified acquisition records beyond leadership expectations to create the Simplified Acquisition Price Analysis and Award Memorandum," said Terry Lazenby, supervisory procurement analyst in the Directorate of Contracting Operations at MICC headquarters.
The memorandum is a PDF-based tool for acquisitions valued at or less than the simplified acquisition threshold. The benefits of the tool is multifaceted. The tool improves compliance in documentation. The ancillary advantages are the time savings achieved by avoiding recreation of documents; the forms double as training tools, making them ideal for junior procurement professionals; and they are standardized, allowing documents to be reviewed more efficiently. It is estimated that the abbreviated Acquisition Strategy Form may be used on 27 percent of MICC new buying actions (2,216 actions) and the Simplified Acquisition Documentation Record may apply to 81 percent (15,941 actions), saving upward of $2.5 million a year in workforce labor costs.
The popularity of the forms has expanded outside the MICC. ACC's Policy Division promoted Cox's Abbreviated Acquisition Strategy template for use across the entire ACC enterprise. Going even further, the Army Corps of Engineers in Pittsburgh discovered the template and requested an unlocked copy to implement within their organization.
"It was a great surprise to see my name among all of the award winners," Cox said. "As far as what it means to me being named an Innovation Award winner, being acknowledged with an ACC annual award is a tremendous honor, and I'm humbled to know that my immediate leadership championed a nomination on my behalf."
When it comes to teamwork, two MICC teams stood out this year. The MICC 2025 Plan team captured the Acquisition Change Advocate Award (other than major weapons systems), and the Contracting Tactical Operation Center team took the ACC Outstanding Achievement Award.
When it came to dealing with change in fiscal 2015 no one did it better than the MICC 2025 Plan team comprised of Anne Carroll, procurement analyst (co-project manager) in the Directorate of Contracting Operations, Jennifer Hastedt, procurement analyst (co-project manager) in the MICC headquarters, Simba Gentry, a MICC personnel human resources specialist, Veronica Limon, procurement analyst in contracting operations, Dean Michalec, deputy to the G1, Maria Allen, deputy chief of staff, G1, Karen Millward-Alston, deputy chief of staff, G8, Thomas White, chief of staff, and Patrick Hogston, director of Contracting Operations.
The team conducted a comprehensive analysis and demonstrated there were areas that could transform the MICC to meet the challenges of the Army's Force 2025 and Beyond. Force 2025 and Beyond is the Army's strategic vision for future operations, focusing on optimizing individual and team performance while improving global responsiveness. The MICC 2025 Plan construct grew from this analysis and addressed two critical, distinct areas: organizational transformation and workload-workforce re-balancing.
The team created an organizational structure to maximize the resources, minimize costs and provide the best acquisition support to the customers. The Army will recognize a significant immediate savings of $11.1 million per year, with full implementation savings of $17.9 million per year. They reduced average office overhead from 34 percent to 12-16 percent. Their research suggests contract execution will be more efficient by producing a better match between MICC's workforce and MICC's workload. Their structure design will decrease in turnover and attrition rates.
The CTOC team was tasked by the MICC commanding general with fielding, implementing and sustaining CTOC across 32 MICC offices in fiscal 2015. CTOC provides the MICC and its contracting offices a configured solution designed to track employee workload and display real-time status. The product the CTOC team has created and sustained provides leaders, employees, and customer visibility of the end-to-end contracting mission, addresses tactical level contract management needs, and trains acquisition professionals at all levels.
The team comprised of Lt. Col. Jonathan Patrick, the commander of MICC-Fort Belvoir, Virginia, Lisa Seery, CTOC lead, Jerry Harvey, CTOC integrator, and Heather Schumack, CTOC customer service, all at Fort Belvoir. Cyprien LaPorte, CTOC program manager, is at MICC headquarters.
Headquartered at JBSA-Fort Sam Houston, Texas, the MICC is made up of more than 1,500 military and civilian members responsible for contracting for Soldiers. In fiscal 2015, the command executed more than 36,000 contract actions valued at more than $5.2 billion across the Army, including $2.25 billion to American small businesses. The command also managed more than 600,000 Government Purchase Card Program transactions in fiscal 2015 valued at an additional $747 million.
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