SAN ANTONIO, Texas –
Senior contracting officials and directors from throughout the command met recently in San Antonio as part of an acquisition training event to discuss key contracting issues in a face-to-face and collaborative venue each day.
Uniformed and civilian leaders representing the Mission and Installation Contracting Command’s two contracting support brigades and two field directorate offices as well as their subordinate battalions and contracting offices are hearing from directly from the command team on priorities tied directly to the organization’s lines of effort.
Brig. Gen. Doug Lowrey, the MICC commanding general, kicked off the four days of acquisition training for leaders Aug. 2 with opening remarks followed by a detailed discussion on updates to his commander's intent.
“We had brigade commanders and FDO directors look at it, and they gave me feedback. Everyone has seen strategic plans and campaign plans; I break it down a lot simpler in the commander’s intent,” Lowrey said while likening it to elements in an Army operations order. “What’s important is who is this for? What is this about? This is about us. If we do things the right way, then … it’s about winning. It’s a ‘win every day’ mentality.”
Lowrey emphasized the keys to success in his commander’s intent. Those include: provide a professional culture, influence connections, inspire individual ownership, and a “win every day” mentality.
“If you apply those keys to success across any organization, you can instill them in your people,” he said. “These are all the intangibles, but these four things are with us all down to the individual level and all the way up the organization, if we strive for that.”
The remainder of the day, aligned to the command’s action people first line of effort, included open forums on the selection and process of identifying senior leaders as well as the acquisition appraisal system and briefings on equal opportunity, inspector general trends and analytics, and the recruitment and retention of contacting Soldiers. Leaders also have the opportunity to network across the organization throughout this week.
The second day of training was aligned to the MICC’s line of effort to deliver effective contracts. It included briefings and discussions on the Army Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention program, fiscal 2023 resource management, Operation Hire Now, training and acculturation, centralized contracting dashboards, quality assurance, property administration, migrating food service and facilities contract requirements to the MICC Installation Readiness Center, integrating the IRC and MICC field offices, Government Purchase Card, cost and pricing, Computerized Optimization Model for Predicting and Analyzing Support Structures contracting tool, and further discussion on the command’s lines of effort.
The command’s influence readiness line of effort drove the third day of training and kicked off with an interactive procurement game on project overview and status led by the office of the deputy assistant secretary of the Army for procurement. It was followed by a mission partner’s perspective brief from J. Randall Robinson, the executive deputy to the commanding general for the Installation Management Command. IMCOM represents the largest contract portfolio for contract support by the MICC. Other topics on the day included compliance with limitation on subcontracting, federal procurement topics, contracting Soldier contingency contracting and contract administration services training, contract protest trends and procurement fraud update, and leadership and the bigger picture.
The fourth and final day aligned with the MICC’s modernize for the future line of effort and begins with the recognition of participants in the MICC Master Gunner Program who graduated Aug. 5. The resident course at the MICC headquarters serves to build a talent management pool by bolstering the contracting proficiency of NCOs and civilians who will return to their respective units to leverage their new skills as evaluators and training future contracting professionals.
According to Master Sgt. Judith Rocha, who serves MICC operations directorate sergeant major, graduates from the Master Gunner Program build upon their operational contract support skills to not only deploy forward in emergent situations but also play a key role in their organizations as mentors, liaisons with major supported organizations, and evaluators in procurement management reviews.
The final day also included individual leader breakout sessions before finishing concluding with an awards and recognition ceremony.