RAPID GETS RAPID-ER A MICHELLE HODGES
COMMAND/ORGANIZATION: Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office
TITLE: Senior contracting official
YEARS OF SERVICE IN WORKFORCE: 18
DAWIA CERTIFICATIONS: Level III in contracting; Level I in program management
EDUCATION: MBA, George Washington University; B.B.A in management, James Madison University
AWARDS: Army Superior Civilian Service Award; Commander’s Award for Civilian Service
s the in-house senior contracting official for the Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO), Michelle Hodges finds herself in a unique position. Most senior contracting officials are assigned to a contract- ing activity and work with several organizations. But having Hodges as an
embedded resource will help eliminate unnecessary processes and enable the organiza- tion—already set up to move quickly—to move even faster.
Hodges is responsible for creating the environment for RCCTO to execute its own contracts for projects as assigned by RCCTO’s board of directors, which is led by the secretary of the Army. It’s a relatively new position: Te head of the Contracting Activ- ity was appointed in July 2018, and Hodges came on in January 2019. “We are building the controls and business systems to internally execute contracting actions as we prepare for strategic projects to come in from the board of directors in support of Army modern- ization priorities and the National Defense Strategy,” she explained.
“We’re starting from zero, but we have great support in the leadership and staff here. In the positions I’ve worked in before, I’ve taken for granted the systems and processes that were in place. But this role is exciting in that we get to decide what’s the best approach, given our lean and agile environment and our goal to provide rapid, strategic acquisi- tion: what do we need, what’s not required, what can we rely on other organizations to help with.”
RCCTO’s goal is to create an environment where there are multiple acquisition path- ways to discover and develop disruptive technologies. Earlier this year, the organization conducted a successful prize challenge to identify new artificial intelligence and machine learning applications for electronic warfare. RCCTO plans to stick with that approach as well as a couple of others, Hodges noted. “In addition to the prize challenge, we have a broad agency announcement that continuously accepts pitches from industry in the form of very short white papers that RCCTO can quickly evaluate and further engage,” she said.
Additionally, RCCTO will issue a commercial solutions opening under a pilot program to look at commercial technologies that can advance the state of the art; host more prize challenges in specific topic areas; and may hold RCCTO pitch days with real-time feed- back. “With these various avenues for discovering new tech, the contracting possibilities are endless: Prototypes, [other-transaction agreements], cooperative agreements and even traditional FAR [Federal Acquisition Regulation]-type contracts can be accelerated to meet the demanding rapid prototyping and fielding schedules,” she said.
Hodges got her start in acquisition nearly 20 years ago as a contract specialist intern with the Defense Supply Service – Washington (which eventually became part of U.S. Army Contracting Command), providing Army staff offices with support services and information technology purchases. Early in her career, she worked for Headquarters, U.S. Army Materiel Command when it was at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
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Army AL&T Magazine
Summer 2019
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