The executive director of the newly activated Army Contracting Command (Provisional) said one of his goals was to turn over the command as quickly as possible to a two-star Army officer and pledged it “with being good stewards of our taxpayer dollars.”
Speaking at the March 13 activation ceremony in front of the Army Materiel Command’s headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Va., Jeffrey Parsons, a retired Air Force contracting officer, said, “Even one instance of procurement fraud, waste or abuse is unacceptable no matter how small the infraction may be.
“The American taxpayer put their trust in us and should not and will not tolerate any violations of this trust.”
The command will oversee more than $85 billion in more than 500 million contracts. In dollar amounts, that is about 20 percent of all federal contracts, he said.
With the command being stood up, Army Secretary Pete Geren said at a media opportunity following the activation ceremony: “We consolidated 70 percent of all Army contracting” by this move and reduced layers of bureaucracy.
He added that the Army had been taking steps to better resource Army contracting even before receiving the formal report of a commission he created to look into ways to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in Army contracts.
Standing up the command was one of the recommendations presented Oct. 31 by a commission chaired by Jacques Gansler, a former Defense Department acquisition chief, in the wake of reports and criminal investigations into contracting fraud originating in Kuwait.
The commission and an internal review found the Army contracting forces, overworked, under-staffed and under-resourced.
Parsons said the Army “must be more pure than Ivory soap as even a 1-percent error equates to $850 million.”
He said it was key to train and develop Army contracting officials, especially the ones in uniform now being added to the force. Nine-hundred officers and noncommissioned officers will be added to the contracting force in the active Army, National Guard and Army Reserve over the next few years.
Parsons expects in the very near future to add a warrant officer contracting branch with its own career path.
In an interview later, he said he expected the warrant officers to provide the expertise to support expeditionary operations and also train officers and NCOs.
“The Army needs a contract general to ensure the operational Army [understands] contracting is a force multiplier.”
The command, answering to AMC, has under its umbrella an Expeditionary Contracting Command, led by Col. Camille Nichols, and an Installation Contracting Command, led by Bryon J. Young.
These two commands will eventually be led by brigadier generals.
Gen. Benjamin Griffin, AMC commander, said, “This is revolutionary change” in terms of speedy implementation. “We stand up this command upon granite not quicksand.”
He charged Parsons, Young and Nichols with doing five things:
“Number one, do what’s legally, ethically and morally correct; give 100 percent; treat people with respect; work together as a command team;” and “stay focused [on its customers] … leading, coaching, teaching.”
Parsons said Army contracting was at a critical juncture in terms of personnel with more than 30 percent of its force having less than five years of service and 40 percent can retire in five years.
Much of the training will be done at the Defense Acquisition University, also located at Fort Belvoir.
Griffin said the designation “provisional” was used because that is the term used to “work the concept plan with the Army staff.”