ARMY AL&T
MEASURE WHAT MATTERS
Improving stakeholder engagement helped the 418th CSB advance the way they do business.
by Jim Clift I
n contracting, there is often an imbal- ance between the less complicated, more comfortable tasks related to contract compli- ance and the murkier, less straightforward
and more challenging tasks associated with stake- holder—customer, warfighter and requiring activity—engagement. The 418th Contracting Support Brigade (CSB) managed to improve stake- holder engagement and saved the government money by reducing the number of noncompetitive contract extensions, known as bridging actions, from fiscal year 2017 to 2019. (See Figure 1, Page 104.)
Warfighter commands must make tough spending choices in the pursuit of maintaining readiness. Not only are bridging actions costly, but they also require contracting professionals to devote time working on both the follow-on contract and the bridging action. While bridge contracts can be necessary tools, the 418th CSB and its requirement activity partners over-relied on them, mostly because of contractor protests, delays in requirements planning and source selection, and unexpected expansion of requirements.
It was apparent to the 418th CSB leadership that an improvement in stakeholder engagement during the requirements planning phase would translate to an improvement in reducing bridge contracts.
Coincidentally, a 2016 Volcker Alliance survey asked 38 government procurement leaders to exam- ine core competencies of the contracting workforce. Procurement leaders rated stakeholder engagement and requirements planning as poor when compared with the contracting workforce’s ability to follow contracting processes. (See Figure 2, Page 104.) Tis only reinforced the 418th CSB’s commitment to change.
USE THE TOOLS AT YOUR DISPOSAL Te 418th CSB challenged itself to better balance the tasks associated with stakeholder engagement and contract compliance-oriented tasks. Pivoting toward better engagement with our customers meant replacing outdated manual processes with an auto- mated tool called the Virtual Contracting Enterprise (VCE). It also meant developing a leading metrics
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