DoD contractors lobby Congress against competition

May 16, 2013 by

As the Army prepares to choose the new builder of its handheld digital radios, the incumbent contractors are tryiing to convince Congress to keep other companies out. The incumbents are General Dynamics, which publicly apologized to the Army over its half of the program last year, and Rockwell Collins. The Army’s own chief of acquisitions, Lt. Gen. William Phillips, told the Senate Armed Services Committee just yesterday that “the industry partners that were not a part of the program of record” — i.e.  the troubled JTRS (Joint Tactical Radio System) program, which had contracted Rockwell and GD — provided “radios that were cheaper, better capability and met almost all of our requirements in most cases”. The service, he said, was committed to “full and open competition.”

We saw a similar play already last year, albeit slightly later in the legislative process, when Reps. Dave Loesback and Trent Frank offered an amendment – later withdrawn – that would have required competitors to meet stringent conditions that effectively ruled out radio-builder Harris and other outsiders, thereby protecting General Dynamics. This time it is co-incumbent Rockwell Collins, which splits the current contract with GD, that’s leading the charge.

Keep reading this article at: http://breakingdefense.com/2013/05/09/army-radios-contractors-lobby-congress-against-competition

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

NSA logistics chief comments on the acquisition process and overcoming challenges

May 9, 2013 by
Note: ExecutiveGov recently spoke with Dr. Harvey Davis, director for installations and logistics at the National Security Agency.  Dr. Davis has held a variety of roles over his 30 years of service to the agency, where his responsibilities have included leading recruitment and overseeing billions of dollars in infrastructure construction.  This article is the third in a series.

ExecutiveGov: What’s the personal value that you’ve taken from your different roles? What’s given you a sense of appreciation for your job?

Dr. Davis: From the growth perspective, one of the things that I did during my career is to never say no to a job that was offered to me. And the jobs that are most attractive to me are the jobs that nobody wants. Which means that you can go in there and you can craft it and you can do the things that you need to do.

As I went through my career, the recruitment, the HR work, the contracts work, and the facilities and logistics work, they all had in common that there were areas that needed to be addressed from a problematic perspective and smoothed out. One of the great things about this agency is this agency is a city. A municipality requires every skill under the sun, and you can move and change focus. If I was in the private sector, I probably couldn’t move from being an HR director to somebody who was in charge of construction across the country and managing billions of dollars of construction.

From a psychological perspective, some of the construction that we’ve done across the country, to see it go from the back of a napkin, where we first thought about it, into brick and mortar, into big buildings, helps you get a psychological sense of achievement. It’s a more tangible sense of achievement than you would have gotten otherwise.

Keep reading this interview at: http://www.executivegov.com/2013/04/dr-harvey-davis-on-his-nsa-career-the-acquisition-process-and-overcoming-challenges/

 

 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , , ,

US has concerns with UK plan to outsource acquisition oversight

May 5, 2013 by

The US Defense Department is expressing concern over a UK initiative to consider outsourcing management of its defense procurement and support operations, roles traditionally filled by government employees.

Britain  plans to select a contractor to fulfill acquisition oversight duties by mid-2014 and is poised to begin a 12-month assessment of the government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) framework. The plan is part of broader overhaul of the UK Defence Equipment & Support operation (DE&S).

“We do have some concerns over an option that would put contractors in roles normally filled by government employees and the effects this would have on ongoing and future cooperation,” said US Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan, a spokeswoman for Frank Kendall, DoD’s top acquisition official.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130429/DEFREG01/304290015/US-Has-Concerns-UK-Plan-Outsource-Acquisition-Oversight

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , ,

Where’s the beef In DoD’s acquisition reform efforts, weapons buys?

May 3, 2013 by

In a town full of hot air, speeches are a dime a dozen. But money still talks. So let’s compare the new Secretary of Defense’s policy agenda to his first proposed budget.

While Leon Panetta, his predecessor, mostly built this budget, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel owns it now and has already spent a considerable amount of time defending it. The results leave interested observers wanting more. Much more. After listening to Hagel’s first policy speech and comparing it to the President’s 2014 defense budget, it begs the question “Where’s the beef?”

Big Ideas …

On its face, the new Secretary of Defense seemed to lay out an ambitious reform agenda for tackling the entrenched bureaucratic interests of the Department of Defense (DoD) and politically sensitive issues in need of modernization. The Secretary talked about areas in need of change — some more than others — including acquisition and the purchase of goods and services; bureaucratic overhead and the size of the civilian workforce; excess infrastructure; and compensation for personnel.

Keep reading this article at http://defense.aol.com/2013/04/22/hagels-budget-wheres-the-beef-in-reform-efforts-budget/ 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , ,

Army acquisition strategy supports helicopters that can’t fly

May 2, 2013 by

The Army’s problem with its new Apache helicopters isn’t as bad as we thought when we first wrote about it last week. It’s worse.

We knew that Northstar Aerospace, the subcontractor making the transmissions for lead contractor Boeing, had fallen behind on building that crucial component. We knew at least seven of the latest model, the vaunted AH-64E Apache Guardian, had been built at some point without transmissions, rendering them unflyable until the part was finally installed.

What we didn’t know was that the Army was taking new Apaches that did have transmissions, running them through the full battery of flight tests, formally accepting them from the contractor, and then taking the transmissions back out again. Why? So Boeing can re-install those transmissions on the next aircraft coming off the line, which allows that chopper to be tested, accepted, and stripped of its transmission in turn.

In brief, it looks like the service is playing a classic shell game that allows the aircraft to pass their flight tests even though there are not enough transmissions for all of them to actually fly at the same time. The Army insists Boeing is paying for all the extra work, as the company should. But installing, removing, reinstalling, re-removing, and re-reinstalling a component can’t help but put unnecessary wear and tear on it. (There’s a reason that technicians call the process, with grim humor, “cannibalization”). The ultimate result is that transmissions will wear out faster, which in turn means more expense down the road and a higher probability of the part failing in combat.

Lt. Gen. William Phillips, the military deputy to Army acquisition chief Heidi Shyu, revealed much of this in testimony this morning (Apr. 26, 2013) to the House Armed Services tactical air and land forces subcommittee. Phillips was responding to a pointed question from a clearly well-briefed Rep. Loretta Sanchez, the panel’s top Democrat. We’ve also received explanatory documents from sources we can’t name. And there are still plenty of questions we’re waiting for the Army and Congress to answer on the record.

Keep reading this article at: http://defense.aol.com/2013/04/26/army-plays-shell-game-with-unfinished-apache-helicopters-put-th

 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , ,

Space acquisition no longer broken, getting better, says GAO

April 29, 2013 by

Less than five years ago, almost every major unclassified space program was grossly over budget and behind schedule.

The rock stars of rottenness were the weather satellite program known as NPOESS and the missile warning satellite program called SBIRS, but they were not alone. These problems ate at the soul of the Air Force and the space community, which had both been justifiably proud of the remarkable accomplishments they had wracked up during the first quarter century of the space age.

Now the Government Accountability Office — which most people in industry and many in the Pentagon will tell you never met a program it liked — has given its tentative stamp of approval to space acquisition with a report bearing this euphonious title: “DOD Is Overcoming Long-Standing Problems, but Faces Challenges to Ensuring Its Investments Are Optimized.” It sounds as if space acquisition is halfway out of the woods.

Here’s the nub of the GAO testimony delivered before House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee:

“For the portfolio of major satellite programs, new cost and schedule growth is not as widespread as it was in prior years, but DOD is still experiencing problems. For example, total program costs have increased approximately $180 million from a baseline of $4.1 billion for one of two satellite programs that are in the earlier phases of acquisition. Though satellite programs are not experiencing problems as widespread as in years past, ground control systems and user terminals in most of DOD’s major space system acquisitions are not optimally aligned, leading to underutilized satellites and limited capability provided to the warfighter.”

Keep reading this article at: http://defense.aol.com/2013/04/25/space-acquisition-no-longer-broken-getting-better-says-gao.

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , ,

Navy shapes UCLASS acquisition strategy

April 19, 2013 by

Upcoming shore-based and carrier tests will help the Navy determine its acquisition strategy for the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System (UCLASS), a large, carrier-based, next-generation drone with a 62-foot wingspan and high-tech sensors engineered to gather and send back images and data, service officials said.

“The UCLASS will be the first deployed carrier based unmanned air vehicle with persistent ISR and a strike capability,” said Navy spokeswoman Jamie Cosgrove.

There are two related and interwoven trajectories with this UAS technology; the Navy is currently testing an early “demonstrator” model of the aircraft while simultaneously preparing to conduct a full and open competition have the UCLASS ready to fly by 2018 to 2020, service officials explained.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2013/04/16/navy-shapes-x-47b-acquisition-strategy/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , ,

Top officers: F-35 essential, but procurement ‘constipated’

April 11, 2013 by

The top officers in the Navy and Marine Corps defended their most expensive program, Lockheed Martin’s troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, while acknowledging the way the Pentagon buys such weapons is not merely broken but “constipated.”

“There’s no alternative for the United States Marine Corps to the F-35B,” Commandant Gen. James Amos said at the opening session of the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space conference. “I want to make that crystal clear to everybody in the audience.” All the great aircraft of the past have gone through teething troubles in development, said Amos, a pilot himself.

“Speaking for the Navy,” added the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, “I need the fifth-generation fighter, and that [F-35] provides it, so we’re all in — but it has to perform. It has problems; it is making progress.”

“I do not at this point believe that it is time to look for an exit ramp, if you will, for the Navy for the F-35C,” continued Greenert, who in the past has damned the Joint Strike Fighter with similar faint praise.

Their commitment to the aircraft aside, both men acknowledged – in response to a pointed question from Reagan’s Navy Secretary, John Lehman — that the procurement process which produces systems like the F-35 is a mess. “The process is constipated,” said Gen. Amos. “It’s broke.”

Keep reading this article at: http://defense.aol.com/2013/04/08/gen-amos-adm-greenert-f-35-essential-but-procurement-consti 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , ,

Federal IT funds circle the drain due to poor procurement policies

April 5, 2013 by

It may seem like a simple thing to fix — if the U.S. government wants more vendors to compete for contracts, just ask more companies to take part. However, those looking to reform the procurement process are running into snags that favor the status quo, and a new survey shows just how much money is wasted. A greater emphasis on open standards and boosting the role of CIOs are two possible solutions now being studied.

Federal agencies routinely pass up opportunities to improve information technology performance, and save money at the same time, by failing to seek vendor competition in the procurement process, according to a recent survey.

Federal IT professionals revealed that their agencies could save as much as $15.8 billion per year — about 20 percent of annual IT spending — by being more aggressive in utilizing multiple vendors in a more competitive environment for infrastructure projects.

The survey of 208 federal specialists was conducted in January by MeriTalk, an online community of public and private sector IT professionals.

Reporting on the survey in early March, MeriTalk said that 95 percent of respondents believe there are benefits to using more than one vendor in an area of their infrastructure, and 44 percent believe that adding a vendor drives down acquisition costs. However, five percent of agencies reported that their entire IT infrastructure uses just one vendor, and another 23 percent use just two or three.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/77636.html.

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Are we headed for an acquisition brain drain?

March 29, 2013 by

The top federal procurement officer on Mar. 21, 2013 called for “not a tweak but a full rethink” of the government’s planning for its acquisition workforce, warning that as many as 40 percent of the 36,000 federal contracting officers could retire in the next five years.

Joe Jordan, administrator of the White House Office of Federal Procurement Policy, compared the coming brain drain to water flowing out of a “giant bathtub,” saying he plans to push agencies to “widen the aperture of who they recruit.”

Hiring managers should sell their agencies “as a good place to work for anyone who is smart and wants to serve” and then train them at facilities such as the Federal Acquisition Institute, Jordan told an audience of vendors and agency staff at the “Acquisition Excellence” conference hosted jointly by the American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council and the General Services Administration. “Retaining these people in an era of continuing resolutions and pay freezes is a real challenge.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2013/03/are-we-headed-acquisition-brain-drain/62011/?oref=dropdown

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
«Older Posts