TWI PROFILES
TWI PROFILE: MAJ ANTHONY LEACH, AIRBUS GROUP INC.
OFF TO SEE HOW ‘THE WIZARD’ WORKS
MAJ Anthony Leach approached his rotation in Training with Industry (TWI), working with Airbus in Huntsville, AL, with
“Te Wizard of Oz” in mind. He wanted to “to see behind the cur- tain, to see how ‘the wizard’—our industry partners—operated. I wanted to learn if there were any differences to their methods of doing business versus the government’s.” He got that look.
Indeed, Leach was surprised that, while “there were many sim- ilarities with the Army” in the operations of Airbus Defence and Space, what seemed simple on the government side was significantly more complex on the contractor side. “Te big- gest difference I noticed was [that] when the government asks the contractor to modify something, whether [it is] hardware or contractual, it is not as easy as I assumed.”
His assumption had been that the government would “just ask the grand wizard, and [the modification] happened as long as there was money.” But what was a “so-called ‘simple modifica- tion’ ” from the Army’s point of view was a bit more complex for the contractor.
A NEW LANGUAGE
“It takes, I would guess, four to six months to gain a feel for the difference between how government operates and how industry operates,” said John Burke, Leach’s TWI liaison at Airbus. Burke, former project manager for unmanned aircraft systems, retired from the Army in 2007. “An officer will continue for a while to try to reconcile if Task A in industry is just like Task A in the govern- ment, and then they realize it may have the same task name, but definition and approach are quite a bit different,” Burke said.
It was Burke’s experience in Army acquisition that prompted him to establish the TWI program at Airbus Defence and Space. Leach was the company’s fourth TWI officer. “My experience in the Army is that missions are defined by task and purpose,” Burke said. “Tat’s how commanders state a mission: Here’s the task, and here’s the purpose. In industry, once you have a task and purpose, you convert that into specifications, schedules, pricing and eventually a contract to execute. And I think the one big difference is how you assess and define risk between the government and the industry side.”
With these differences in execution and the complexities of each business group, Leach found that integrating himself into the inner workings of the company would take more than the year that the TWI program allowed. But the leadership and the integration processes within Airbus Defence and Space made adapting to the corporate culture seamless, Leach said. “When you’ve worked in the acquisition workforce, there’s a lot of inter- action with your industry partners. Te toughest part was trying to figure out what to wear to work every day,” he said.
EXPERIENCE IT ALL Leach said he went to Airbus with “a plan to rotate to each busi- ness area of the company. I wanted to see how each operated. I expected to see and receive some great leadership, and that’s what I saw during my tenure.”
“Every one of our TWI officers has a portfolio of projects that they work,” said Burke. In addition, TWI officers rotate through different functional areas at Airbus. “When they leave the TWI program the following summer, they’ve had exposure to logistics and engineering, production, scheduling and plan- ning, finishing with finance and contracts.
“Two of our TWI officers were degreed engineers … and we had both of those officers work some urgent and important engineer- ing issues. One of the officers was an expert in program planning and control, and he focused on program planning and control and program analysis. We had another officer who was an expert in strategic communications and strategic program definition, which were essential for a project for us.” Leach, a career logisti- cian with a contracting background, worked directly with the logistics chief and, without representing Airbus on any business transactions, had input into managing the turn time for a time- and-materials contract, Burke said.
CLOSE TO THE ACTION When Leach applied for TWI, Airbus was still EADS – North America (EADS-NA). EADS had been in talks about merging with BAE Systems, one of its major shareholders. But that plan was scuttled, and two other major EADS shareholders, Daim- lerChrysler Aerospace AG and Lagardère,
sold their shares.
140
Army AL&T Magazine
July–September 2014
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