PLAN for better PLANNING


For bet ter contracts and bet ter support to the warfighter, integrate operational contract support personnel into the same education system that trains the operational personnel.


by Maj. Kasandra B. Tharp I


magine you’re a contingency contracting specialist supporting an exercise in the Philippines. Having arrived in the country, you receive a list of requirements from the operational units participating in the exercise and have limited time to get vendors on contract. Te requirements that vendors will supply range from


basic life support to some that are more mission-specific. In any case, you have a strict time limit to make the mission happen.


So, the requirement for 200 portable toilets at a Philippine exercise range doesn’t raise any red flags for you as you execute the process to compete the requirement for quotes. When the unit arrives a week later, however, an issue pops up. Tese aren’t the typi- cal Western portable toilets U.S. personnel might expect to find at U.S. training sites. Tese are the local version, designed for squatting instead of sitting—clearly a differ- ence between what the planners intended and what the contracting personnel executed.


Over the past decade, with the Army and other service components supporting large- scale contingency operations in Southwest Asia, a distinct disconnect has become evident between operational contract support (OCS) planners and the joint opera- tional planning effort blending contractual support with the services’ built-in logistical capabilities. Tis disconnect surfaces commonly during joint bilateral exercises, where basic contracting principles like defining requirements—not just any kind of portable toilet—are executed poorly because of the lack of OCS perspective.


HTTPS: / /ASC.ARMY.MIL


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CONTRACTING


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