OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS
Shimeka Goston, center, a contract specialist with RCC-QA, delivers a presentation on registration in the System for Award Management (SAM) to vendors at a March industry day at the Alfardan Gardens Housing Area in Ar-Rayyan, Qatar. Supporting Goston were other members of the pre-award team: from left, Fakera Nazneen, Michael Kraft, Maj. Trevor Chambers and Shonna Tyson. The event was a chance for vendors to get more information about the benefits of doing business with the U.S. government; SAM is a central registry of companies authorized to do business with the government. (Photo by Redjie Del Rosario, Vectrus)
Because invoicing instructions are included in the contract clauses, identifying the procedures that vendors will use is vital to ensure timely processing of payments.
• Te need for a method whereby each organization can track the actions it has awarded. Te contracting activities base their manning decisions in part on the number and complexity of actions that a contracting office has awarded. Tus, each orga- nization must be able to account for the workload involved in awarding and administering contracts.
NOT-SO-SIMPLE SOLUTIONS Te seemingly simple solution—to grant the 379th ECONS access to the existing RCC-QA structures within Procure- ment Defense Desktop—proved to be more challenging than expected. Although they were already trained in the use of PD2, granting the Air Force personnel access to Army systems required sponsoring them in Army Knowledge Online and fill- ing out multiple system access requests. Te processing times for these requests varied, but the distances between system admin- istrators in the continental U.S. and the end users in theater only made the waits longer. Te significant time differences often meant lost days between submission of requests and actions taken.
Te next hurdle was a longer-than-expected wait for the network communications team to verify the acceptability of the Citrix software used by the Army and install it on the Air Force users’ computers. Because of the obvious need for information security, this process took approximately six weeks longer than expected.
Similarly, the two services lack a common procedure for accep- tance and invoicing. Te immediate solution was to include a local clause that Air Force-awarded task orders required sub- mission of invoices manually through established Air Force procedures and that Army-awarded task orders would use
WAWF. Issuing multiple sets of instructions for the same pay- ment process, however, runs counter to the very efficiencies that the services have been trying to create.
CONCLUSION Te collaboration between an Army regional contracting com- mand and an Air Force contracting squadron is a small step in realizing the goal of operational contract support: that different agencies work together to enable the combatant commander to fulfill the mission. While great strides can be made at the tacti- cal level to increase communication and cooperation, the larger acquisition community must take concrete steps at the joint level to advance this goal.
Te adoption of a common contract writing system and vendor payment method would allow for a single pool of system admin- istrators and provide more effective theaterwide support.
For more information, contact the authors at
Michael.j.carroll50.
mil@mail.mil or
sarah.lark@
auab.afcent.af.mil.
MAJ. MICHAEL J. CARROLL is a contract management officer at RCC-QA, Camp As Sayliyah. He has an MBA in contract management from the Naval Postgraduate School and a B.S. in business management from Empire State College. He is Level II certified in contracting and has been a member of the acquisition workforce for nearly four years.
CAPT. SARAH LARK (USAF) is the commander of the 379th ECONS at Al Udeid Air Base. She has an M.A. in procurement and acquisition management from Webster University and a B.S. in business administration from Te Citadel. She is Level III cer- tified in contracting and has been a member of the acquisition workforce for 10 years.
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CONTRACTING
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