Army Field Support Battalion-Kuwait (AFSBn-KU) is responsible for the receipt, maintenance, storage, and issue of Army Pre-Positioned Stock-5 (APS-5) in the U.S. Central Command theater. Currently, APS-5 consists of 47,266 pieces of equipment valued at approximately $2.5 billion, and the supporting contract is valued at approximately $150 million. Contracting officer’s representatives (CORs) assigned to AFSBn-KU are charged with the oversight of this contract. Most AFSBn-KU CORs arrive in Kuwait with zero previous exposure to contract oversight. To improve COR performance, AFSBn-KU developed and implemented creative solutions in the selection, training, and continued development of its CORs that improved a key performance metric by 87%.
AFSBn-KU personnel consist of active-duty Soldiers and Department of the Army civilians (DACs) assigned to Camp Arifjan for a one-year permanent change of station tour, U.S. Army Reserve Soldiers deployed for nine months from the Army Reserve Sustainment Command, and Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) quality assurance specialist (QAS) civilians deployed for eight months. This diverse population brings a wealth of experience and a wide variety of baseline knowledge regarding COR roles and responsibilities. Reserve and DCMA personnel will typically rotate in teams with identified replacements, while active-duty military and DACs are spread across the calendar year with less consistency and predictability.
Changes to Army manning guidance can compound normal personnel turnover, leading to newly assigned personnel arriving with little to no transition time with existing team members and occasional gaps lasting six to 12 months. The personnel churn, varying backgrounds, and onboarding time needed for a new COR to perform at the necessary level result in an environment where CORs may only execute their duties to standard for four to six months before the entire process starts again. This ultimately impacts the consistency of surveillance being performed across the contract’s period of performance.
Most uniformed personnel assigned to the battalion are senior NCOs who have developed the appropriate leadership and technical and tactical skill sets to ensure mission success. The role of a COR is foreign to nearly all new personnel. Being a COR requires a mindset shift from “make it happen” to “observe and report.” The COR has no direct control of the daily mission accomplishment for which the contractor is responsible. Daily duties of a COR vary widely and include conducting surveillance on assigned performance work statement (PWS) lines, reviewing contract deliverables and reports, and processing contractor requirement packages. The COR cannot employ many tools that made them successful Soldiers to influence the contractor to accomplish the mission without risking an unauthorized commitment for which they can be held personally financially liable. This requires an understanding that a COR can be successful even if the contractor fails. This concept may conflict with a new COR’s ethos and personal measures of success.
AFSBn-KU CORs, even those with prior COR experience, are almost universally new to the APS environment. For example, Technical Manual 38-470, Storage and Maintenance of Army Prepositioned Stock Materiel, specifies the maintenance requirements for APS equipment, including the respective service intervals and required checks. With few exceptions, these service intervals are every 24 to 48 months with a 30-day check while dealing with supplies in storage, depending on whether the equipment is stored outdoors or indoors. CORs and all AFSBn-KU personnel must rapidly develop an understanding of APS requirements and procedures to effectively perform their duties.
The baseline Army COR certification process does not appropriately prepare non-contracting experts to oversee an APS contract. COR training consists of 36 hours of computer-based training provided by Defense Acquisition University and 4 hours of classroom training provided by the regional contracting center (RCC). After completion of this training, a QAS from the RCC performs a COR validation on their understanding of presented material. If the candidate passes the validation, he or she is designated a COR by the administrative contracting officer (ACO).
AFSBn-KU observed negative trends with newly designated CORs following designation, including monthly surveillance checklists being rejected by the RCC for administrative errors, poor linkage between contractor action and the contractual requirement they failed to meet, and inconsistent or inaccurate evaluation of contractor performance over multiple reporting periods. Root cause analysis indicated CORs were assigned to surveillance in areas unfamiliar to them, a lack of the experience needed to understand and analyze contractual documents and associated PWS information, and a lack of organizational understanding of process and procedure that inhibited proper surveillance and oversight. Faced with these challenges AFSBn-KU developed and implemented a supplemental COR program for the battalion, the Contracting Officer Representative Academy. This involved using the DCMA QASs as coaches to provide the CORs with support and guidance before assuming their responsibilities.
The COR Academy was developed and implemented as an informal training program to bridge the gap between formal training and practical performance of COR duties. The COR Academy is a five-day course (approximately 16 hours, which can be condensed into two days if necessary). The Academy considers all the training the CORs have received and translates it into the effective use of the skills they have learned in the performance of their COR duties. The COR Academy focuses specifically on the APS-5 contract, showing CORs the contractual documents, PWS, resulting checklists, and the quality assurance surveillance plan to ensure they understand what these products are and how to use them effectively to monitor the contractor. They are taught surveillance techniques to effectively evaluate contractor performance and the administrative and documentation requirements unique to COR personnel.
This course has proved successful in flattening the learning curve for new CORs and has decreased the amount of time it takes a COR to be able to competently perform their duties to one month or less. Approximately 25 Soldiers and civilians have completed the COR Academy since its first iteration in early 2023. At any given point in time there are approximately 35 to 40 Soldiers and civilians in AFSBn-KU.
Following the COR Academy, all new CORs perform a complete walkthrough of their PWS lines with a DCMA QAS. This is done to ensure that the COR fully understands the requirements contained within their checklists and that they can provide effective oversight of their assigned areas. These walkthroughs are repeated periodically with the battalion leadership to facilitate feedback on the CORs’ performance and to improve content covered in the COR Academy.
QASs also perform spot checks of battalion CORs’ monthly work products before submission to the RCC. CORs are assigned a QAS as their group coach to provide continued assistance and expertise during their assignment. These steps have resulted in less rework and a better overall surveillance product while decreasing frustrations and increasing effectiveness.
One key metric indicating the program’s success is a reduction in the average processing time of a corrective action request submitted by a COR to the RCC from 115 days in April 2023 to 15 days in January 2024, an 87% decrease. This indicates a significant improvement in the quality of objective evidence of contract performance deficiencies that CORs are submitting.
Recognizing the expertise provided by DCMA’s augmentees, the 401st Army Field Support Brigade, AFSBn-KU’s higher headquarters, submitted a request to Army Sustainment Command to increase the authorized number from three to six. The DCMA personnel bring existing contract surveillance experience far beyond that of uniformed personnel. They can often manage multiple PWS lines that do not require subject matter expertise in a logistics information system such as Global Combat Support System-Army, maintenance, supply, or other areas linked to a military occupational specialty. This enables the battalion to align its military and DAC personnel against the more technical contract lines, ideally with multiple individuals on the same line, providing both breadth and depth to surveillance duties.
In support of progress made with the COR Academy, AFSBn-KU established weekly meetings with the RCC ACO to review new and ongoing issues, share best practices or new ideas, and ensure both organizations are working together to ensure proper oversight of U.S. Government resources. This open dialogue has flattened lines of communication and, alongside the innovative solutions implemented by AFSBn-KU, has laid the foundation for improved performance and auditability in a resource-constrained environment.
Organizations with similar contractual oversight requirements can benefit from developing their own tailored training package to effectively onboard and maximize the talent within their formations. The AFSBn-KU contracting management officer can provide the APS-5 COR Academy products as an example starting point for units.
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Lt. Col. Kafui Avotri currently works at the Defense Logistics Agency Energy in the Mobility Fuels Division - Direct Delivery Fuels as a deputy division chief. He deployed with the 401st Army Field Support Brigade from October 2022 to July 2023 as the contract management officer for Army Field Support Battalion-Kuwait. He holds an MBA (with concentration in global business management) and a professional certification in contracting (Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act level 3). He is a member of the Defense Acquisition Corps and the Army Acquisition Corps.
Anthony Cobb is a lead quality assurance specialist with the Defense Contract Management Agency in Baltimore, Maryland. He is currently deployed as a part of the Contingency Response Force program to U.S. Army Garrison Poland. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in organizational management from the University of La Verne. He retired from the U.S. Navy in 2015 after 25 years of service.
James Haas is a quality assurance specialist with the Defense Contract Management Agency in Lynn, Massachusetts. He is currently deployed as a part of the Contingency Response Force program to Camp Buehring, Kuwait. He has an engineering and technical management foundational certification from the Defense Acquisition University.
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This article was published in the fall 2024 issue of Army Sustainment.
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