before becoming acquisition personnel. Similar to the operational planning community, they are “stovepiped” within their own specialty and are not developing the skills necessary to work with their operational counterparts.
THE LAST-MINUTE APPROACH As a practical reality, contracting often ends up being more an instrument to meet last-minute needs for supplies, construction or services than a focus of operations planning. Just as the demand for an item increases its value, this creates problems—inflated prices, unmet requirements, failed projects—in procuring items that are needed immediately. Te last-minute approach rarely considers the necessary contract size and scope to fully support an operation.
For example, inadequate planning for equipment—whether light forklifts, heavy cranes or container handlers—to off-load ground vehicles to be used in a mission will likely lead to profound diffi- culties for the warfighter. By not planning adequately, this materiel may be left sitting on a tarmac, waiting to be moved and essentially useless. In addition, having to hire contractors who are both certified and readily available can exact an unex- pectedly high, budget-straining cost.
to include the intricacies of contracting in the full spectrum of planning considerations. Te goal of this overall culture change should be to create a new generation in the planning community, one prepared to apply a multidisciplinary perspective to the vari- ous factors that influence the operational environment.
Tis cultural transformation can begin with education, specifi- cally at the advanced schools that develop plans personnel. A step in the right direction would be to integrate guest instructors from the School of Advanced Military Studies and JOPEC into the corresponding planning and contracting courses. However, the best, though more costly, solution would be to let OCS personnel attend the School of Advanced Military Studies and its counter- parts in the other services, and include contracting as a formal part of the curriculum.
Te ultimate objective should be to better integrate OCS person- nel into operational environments to implement contracting earlier in the operation, thus avoiding the conflicts arising from last-minute contracting. Finally, advanced military schooling would better prepare operational contracting personnel to provide the services that the planning community requires for the Soldier.
Clearly, a gap needed to be filled in the contracting efforts for contingency operations, and the contracting commu- nity’s answer was OCS.
CONCLUSION In the end, planners across the force must be in sync in order to provide the most effective efforts. Te operational contract support planner needs to understand what the warfighter needs. In turn, the warfighter and those who plan their missions need to understand what it takes to clearly define and execute opera- tional requirements.
Only a fundamental change in the culture of operations plan- ning will be sufficient to fix this disconnect, instilling the need
Te necessary culture change begins with the education infra- structure that already exists. Attendance at these schools by OCS experienced personnel will be of immense benefit to all students and the planning community at large. If the Army continues its current lack of integration of warfighting and OCS planners, then operational inefficiencies and excessive costs will persist. Proper integration of OCS will result in better-defined requirements, lower costs and improved schedule and performance. Ultimately, enabling the warfighter is why Army contracting exists.
For more information, email the author at
kasandra.b.tharp.mil@
mail.mil.
MAJ. KASANDRA B. THARP is a procurement officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Missile and Space Intelligence Center, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. Previously she was a contracting instructor at the Army Acquisition Center of Excellence in Hunts- ville, Alabama. She holds an M.A. in procurement and acquisition management and an M.A. in business and organizational manage- ment from Webster University, and a B.S. in sociology with a concentration in criminology from Kansas State University. She is Level III certified in contracting and is a member of the Army Acqui- sition Corps.
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