TIME TO THINK
MASTERING THE ART OF PROCUREMENT Hallock and the Hon. Heidi Shyu, the Army acquisition executive, discuss strategy at a cooking competition held in conjunction with the Principal Assistant for Contracting 2013 Summer work- shop hosted by the ODASA(P) in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kathie Scarrah, ODASA(P))
plethora of automation tools that allow us to do everything faster and presum- ably better, we must stop at critical points in the process and think about what we’re doing and why.
CALLED TO DUTY From the beginning of my career, I rec- ognized my good fortune to work at a weapon systems command where I could learn the many types of contracting, including spares, research and develop- ment, installation and, of course, buying weapon systems. My goal was the same as for any contract specialist today: to support our troops. It was especially sat- isfying to know that my hard work had a positive impact on our Soldiers in battle and, more important, helped to bring them home alive.
A decade into my career, a typical day for me included reviewing requirements packages and interacting with the cus- tomer—a host of government support personnel without whom we couldn’t function, including legal, financial
106 Army AL&T Magazine
management, logistics and engineering personnel, as well as support organiza- tions such as the Defense Contract Audit Agency, Defense Contract Management Agency, Defense Finance and Account- ing Service and others. I also interacted with offerors
interested in our solicita-
tions and others with whom we already had contracts. In all cases there were questions to be answered, clauses to be explained and problems to be solved. Days were full, and it was rare that one ended with our having completed what we had thought we would accomplish when the day began. Inevitably, one or more “crises” sent us off in a totally dif- ferent direction.
And then there was that midnight tele- phone call on a cold Michigan night in January 1991. Operation Desert Storm had begun that day, Jan. 17, and when I left the office late that afternoon, I had no idea I’d soon be back working with the entire TACOM weapon system team in direct support of TACOM and the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)
leadership on this emerging crisis. By then, I was a GS-13 contracting officer who worked hard and slept even harder, so I was a bit out of sorts when I received the call from the TACOM Operations Center. Te command needed me back in the office immediately. At 0400, the TACOM commander, then-MG Leo J. Pigaty (who retired in 1994 as a lieutenant general), was scheduled to brief GEN H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the CENTCOM commander, who required several thou- sand Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks to be moved into theater within hours; the force needed more tactical vehicles than originally contemplated in support of the M1 Abrams tanks and the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles.
Te challenge was tremendous. Trans- porting these vehicles by ship was out of the question, as it would take too long; CENTCOM needed these vehicles for the initial surge. I woke up my counterparts at Oshkosh Truck Corp., and we began the process of determining options and laying out courses of action. Te solution—air transport—quickly became obvious, but the execution was not so simple; it would involve TACOM, U.S. Army Materiel Command, the Air Force, the U.S. Trans- portation Command, industry and many others.
We prepped MG Pigaty, and by the time the briefing to CENTCOM began at 0400 EST, the TACOM team, along with our compatriots across DOD, were able to lay out a plan that required Oshkosh to drive completed vehicles some 90 miles to General Mitchell International Air- port in Milwaukee, WI, where Air Force C5A aircraft, flown there for this mission, would ship the vehicles directly to the- ater. I returned to my desk around 0430 and promptly fell asleep. Tere, a fellow employee found me the next morning, sound asleep, head on my desk well ahead
October–December 2014
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