The Naval Station Guantanamo Bay Regional Contracting Office has won RCO of the Year for 2011.
Awarded by the Army's active component 410th Contracting Support Brigade, RCO Guantanamo Bay provided exceptional service and made significant contributions to the mission performance.
The RCO's mission is to evaluate and approve or deny unit supply requests. RCO processes both the naval station's and Joint Task Force's requests.
For the RCO to win the award, Team Chief Paula Claudio submitted a packet to the 410th for consideration.
"My work would be not successful without the customer's work, so we engage them into this process," said Claudio.
She said that the RCO Guantanamo Bay developed a better working relationship with Joint Task Force by training organizations on acquisition planning, performance work statements, quality assurance plans, contract administration and contract monitoring.
The RCO also developed the first consolidated annual report to raise awareness of the organization and provide the Joint Task Force commander situational awareness.
Many improvements to the RCO helped the office win. One improvement is the increase in Contract Office Representatives.
Claudio explained that before the adjustment, customers often sent requests unassisted.
"Now the office has more CORs to help customers," Claudio said "These are the guys who are outside checking all the work and coordinating contracts."
Another improvement Claudio and the office made was the creation of an intranet application offering downloadable templates.
"A lot of the forms were inconsistent, because customers were looking online for examples," said Claudio. "Now we have a web page that makes things more efficient for the customer and us."
The RCO has made many improvements to earn the RCO of the Year award, but the award isn't the reason to celebrate. According to Claudio, the improvements to the system and the relationship between the JTF and RCO are the real success.
"Just with the comments from the community I was satisfied," said Claudio. "That's why I wanted to extend the celebration to the JTF because their part as the customer was very important, so this award is for JTF too."
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