SHAPING ARMY ACQUISITION
WHEN COVID CALLS
The pandemic’s culture change switched the focus from a normal workload to get ting the PPE out the door.
by Rachel Porto and Adam Lowe T om Kloehn has had a few more responsibilities than usual, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
His normal day-to-day routine was quickly shelved when the Army asked his team to provide what seemingly the entire world needed: personal protective equipment (PPE). As it happened, Kloehn’s team was tasked with working with the Army Contracting Command (ACC), General
Services Administration (GSA) and the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) to award contracts for KN95 respi- rators, face shields, nitrile gloves, hand sanitizers, eye protection, biohazard bags and combat face coverings, as well as thermometers, shoe covers, surgical caps, surgical gowns and surgical masks. “[Te U.S. Department of] Health and Human Services and DOD entities would say to us, ‘We have X amount of dollars for PPE; how can we get the biggest bang for our buck?’ So our team would start strategizing by seeing what’s on the market and what’s the fastest and cheapest way we can get this out to the Soldiers who need it,” said Kloehn.
THE BIG SHIFT Kloehn normally leads a product management team, working on programs of record that focus on protecting the joint services against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats via mass personnel contamination mitigation systems. His team has also worked on the development of a transfer case that can protect mortuary affairs Soldiers and air crew members from contamination as they work to repatriate the remains of service members or military dependents who died in a CBRN-contaminated environment while outside the continental U.S. It’s the type of 9-to-5 job that most high school guidance counselors don’t often talk about. Despite the unsung nature of the job, Kloehn takes great satisfaction knowing his team provides a capability to the warfighter that not only protects them from harm, but allows them to continue and complete their mission in a potentially dangerous environment.
But at the beginning of the pandemic, Kloehn was asked to do something a little outside of his wheelhouse. His team pivoted from its usual CBRN protection procurement and dug through regulatory and technical requirements and, together with ACC, got the PPE contracts together at much quicker speeds, reducing the timeline dramatically, despite no one physically being in the office. Te timeline from requirements identi- fication to contract award would typically take around 30 days for procurements similar to these; however,
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