(Series 1 Post 8)
Chris Suhre spent 20 years on active duty and currently has 23 years under his belt as a civil servant. So, what’s he doing that’s keeping him so engaged? He’s spending hundreds of millions of dollars that aren’t his!
“I love my job, and I get to spend the government’s money,” he said, laughing.
Yep! That sounds pretty amazing, and it is, but even though Chris has a pretty good thing going, he does work really hard and there’s a lot of complexities to his job that people don’t see. So, buckle up, settle in, and let’s put some perspective into what he does as a Contracting Officer Representative.
U.S. Army Forces Command has a ton of great civilians who do a lot of different things that make FORSCOM an amazing place to work. So, when there’s work to be done and not enough people to do it, the show must go on, and that’s where Chris comes in.
“I get contractors hired,” he said, “and they do really good work, but we don’t have to pay them benefits so it’s much more cost-effective bringing them on board than it would be to hire a General Schedule employee.”
Contractors hired for FORSCOM do pretty much the same work as GS employees, and they are just as qualified. Like any employee being vetted for a position though, even contractors have to meet certain standards. Chris says the process for hiring them these days is also way more complex than it used to be.
“When I first got here, if someone wanted a contractor, they’d just call General Services Administration or GSA, and essentially order one, and a person would show up at your office the following day,” he said, “but the truth is there were contractors scattered all through the building and no one really knew how much we were spending on contracts or how many contractors there really were,” he said. “The process was kind of out of control.”
It was Chris’ former boss, Charlie Beisel, who realized that contractors and the entire contracting procurement process needed to be reeled in and revamped. Too many Military Interdepartmental Purchase Requests or MIPRs were being submitted and it was just chaos.
“I had to keep people from writing any more MIPRs asking for help,” said Chris. “Charlie put me in charge of wrangling all the contractors and finding out where they were, what they were doing, and how much they were costing us,” he said.
Sounds a little bit like herding cats to me, but hey. If it ultimately ended up working out for the best, then that was a win for FORSCOM for sure. According to Chris, the contracting process now is streamline and works well. Chris says there’s a total of 48 active contractors within the FORSCOM G-3/5/7 working in training, plans, and aviation.
“All contractors know they have a job to do, and they know they don’t work for FORSCOM; they work for the contract that supports FORSCOM,” he said, “and that’s an important fact because working for FORSCOM directly means that would be a personal service contract and those are illegal,” said Chris.
The contracting field and various positions in it aren’t relegated just to Army Civilians, though. Many Army units use enlisted Soldiers as COR’s for maintenance contracts, and there’s also an Army career field where you can become a contracting officer. In the 51C career field, a non-commissioned officer can be an Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology NCO. Chris says it’s a Military Occupational Specialty that will transfer over to the civilian side of the house, too. So, for people like Chris who feel pretty lucky doing what they do, he encourages others to check out the field of contracting because overall, the career field is in dire need of eager and enthusiastic people.
“I came into the job doing what I’m doing here, and after 23 years, I’m amazed at how lucky I got. I love it here—the people I work with, the job, the responsibility and the trust people have in me,” said Chris. “When people come to me for my expertise, that’s a good feeling,” he said. “As long as I get that type of feedback, I’ll keep doing this job until I’m 70 years old.”
Thanks for your service to FORSCOM Chris, and thank you for helping FORSCOM accomplish the mission every day. To learn more about FORSCOM, visit https://www.linkedin.com/company/us-army-forces-command-fedeforscom/.
Join me next month for another conversation blog with a FORSCOM team member who loves what they do. Till then, take care, Be All You Can Be At FORSCOM, and don’t forget to “Take 5.”
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