Wade Pasquarella, Maintenance Surveillance Branch Chief for the Aviation Center Logistics Command at Fort Rucker, Ala., was recognized for his service with the 2017 Louis Dellamonica Award.
The Louis Dellamonica Award annually recognizes outstanding accomplishments that significantly contributed to the Army Materiel Command's mission and overarching goals and objectives. Each year, AMC selects approximately 10 employees - military and civilian - below the rank of general officer and senior executive service, who meet the established criteria and stand out as model employees. AMC includes more than 64,000 employees in all 50 states and more than 150 countries.
The award is named in honor of Louis Dellamonica, a general engineer with AMC's Hawthorne Army Depot, in Nevada. Dellamonica was both the oldest and longest-serving Department of Defense employee before retiring in January 2007 at the age of 94 with more than 65 years of government service.
Pasquarella's career encompasses more than 36 combined years of Army active duty and civil service. After multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he retired as a sergeant major in 2009. Pasquarella was initially hired as a Quality Assurance Specialist at the UH-60 training heliport, Lowe Field, at Fort Rucker. Currently, he leads a team of 60 Soldiers and Department of the Army civilians who oversee contract maintenance operations for three Army heliports, supporting the Army's aviator training on the Black Hawk, Chinook, and Apache aircraft. These fleets comprise almost half of the Army's rotary-wing training fleet at Fort Rucker, 286 aircraft, and fly more than 95,000 hours to train 2,700 U.S. Army and allied nations' aviators each year.
In 2017, Pasquarella, while continuing to lead his branch, was a key leader in the Fort Rucker Aviation Maintenance Services contract acquisition. From helping to build the Request for Proposal, partnering with the Training and Doctrine Command training brigade and battalions for requirements, and using his extensive aviation maintenance background to determine viability of aircraft maintenance capabilities, Pasquarella was key to keeping the complex process on track and on schedule.
The ten-year, $5 billion Fort Rucker contract, which employs more than 3,500 employees maintaining more than 600 aircraft, including both Army and Air Force helicopters, was awarded on time and on budget, largely due to Pasquarella's efforts. His expertise was essential to successfully resolving contract protests, both during and after the contracting acquisition process. Pasquarella assisted the contracting officer throughout intense negotiations with companies bidding on the contract. The leader of the Department of Defense Peer Review Group noted Pasquarella's methodology for objectively rating contractor proposed strengths and initiatives as a best practice not just for the Army, but for the Department of Defense.
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