Lessons learned from the last 10 years of high-tempo operations for USACE are being folded into the best business practices of the Army and the Department of Defense. These include better governance and oversight mechanisms to improve efficiency at all levels.
“We do reviews at different stratifications of dollar amounts, reviewing each other’s work internally to make sure we’re using best practices,” Hazlett said. “Depending on the dollar amount of a project within a district we may say that we’ll allow for a peer review in that district. As the dollar amount gets higher, we’ll ask our principal assistants responsible for contracting [PARCs] to do peer reviews at their level. Then we go to the Head of the Contracting Activity [HCA] level. The Head of the Contracting Activity for USACE is Lt. Gen. Tom Bostick. Any project of $250 million to $1 billion is reviewed at the HCA level. That’s very helpful to the team to make sure we’re executing quality business deals.”
In addition to improving its internal contracting processes, USACE is streamlining the acquisition process, saving money for defense contractors competing for contract awards.
“While we’re trying to execute more innovative contract types that provide incentives for contractors, we’ve also come up with innovative ways to help defense contractors save money,” Hazlett said.
“Increasingly, we’re using a two-phase design-build approach for contracting. Those opportunities are placed on the Federal Business Opportunities website. There may be as many as 30 contractors in a geographic area where a project is proposed who would like to bid on that work. With the two-phase design-build approach, we look at their technical capabilities in the first phase. Then we do a down-select and head into phase two with perhaps five of those 30 contractors competing. Defense contractors like this approach because they don’t have to invest as much time and money as they would if they had to submit a complete technical and cost/price proposal. That’s why we like the two-phase approach.”
Becoming more efficient also means reaching out to small businesses. According to Hazlett, USACE is actively liaising with smaller firms through the USACE Small Business Office, educating them and helping them navigate complicated federal acquisition regulations and imperatives that apply to the government.
“In FY 12, we awarded $7.2 billion, which equates to 44 percent of our acquisitions, to small business. When you look at our mission and the type of things we buy, there are many opportunities for us to partner with small businesses. Unlike the acquisition of DoD major weapon systems, we have a different industrial base that we leverage. We deal with a highly competitive marketplace that is comprised of many A-E and construction small businesses.”
Director of Contracting Stuart Hazlett, USACE’s top contracting professional, is keenly aware of the importance of contract labor to USACE and the immense quantity of services and goods the command purchases. Here, he provides an overview to senior leaders on the scope of USACE’s acquisition process. USACE photo
More broadly, Hazlett is working to grow the professionalism of USACE members who engage in the acquisition and contracting processes, emphasizing training and education for district contracting officers, contracting chiefs, and district commanders. With nearly half of the USACE workforce currently eligible for retirement, grooming new and recently hired members of the command in business deal quality contracting is essential.
“I’m very passionate about that,” Hazlett said. “Via the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act we receive continuous training and education. That’s where I come in as the director of contracting. One of my contributions to the command is to ensure that we have qualified and trained contracting professionals. We need to make sure that our district commanders have acquisition and contracting professionals supporting their mission.
“We’ll send our people to a school house at the Defense Acquisition University and within the Corps of Engineers, we have our Proponent-Sponsored Engineer Corps Training [PROSPECT] courses. We build our own particular courses to educate our workforce since we’re the only ones buying construction,” he continued. “In addition, we put together refresher courses for the procuring contracting officers [PCOs].
“It’s a privilege to have a warrant from the United States government to obligate dollars, so we’re building what I call a ‘PCO boot camp.’ That will refresh their knowledge because laws, regulations, and policies are constantly changing. We’re also building a course for the district contracting chiefs. Our warranted PCOs may possess superior contracting knowledge, but when they become district contracting chiefs, they require additional skillsets. They may be responsible for obligating a billion dollars per year in their district. We need to provide them with training so that they know how to manage that contracting enterprise,” Hazlett said.
“Our district commanders are being educated in acquisition. These people are superior engineers but they may lack acquisition awareness. We’re building coursework for them to boost their knowledge so that they can monitor the health of their contracting enterprise from an acquisition standpoint.”
Though the effort to reform and streamline contracting within USACE has only been under way for the last couple years, Hazlett said USACE will make more progress.
“We’re still exploring our weaknesses and emphasizing our strengths, but we’re optimistic that over the next couple of years, we’ll become the best contracting organization in the Army.”
This article originally appeared in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: Building Strong®, Serving the Nation and the Armed Forces 2012-2013 Edition.