Director highlights DCMA strengths, acquisition transition in first SoCal visit

Director highlights DCMA strengths, acquisition transition in first SoCal visit

By Luis Delgadillo Operational Business Center Public Affairs

During a weeklong visit to Southern California, Navy Vice Adm. Stephen Tedford, Defense Contract Management Agency director, and Dr. Juanita Christensen, executive director of DCMA's Geographic and Systems Support Command, toured contractor facilities, met with defense contractors and held five employee engagements from March 2-6.

The week's activities also gave local agency leaders and defense contractor executives the chance to continue or build on successful relationships with DCMA senior leaders. The tour marks this director's first visit to DCMA facilities in the Southern California region.

"The complexity and variety of Acquisition Category I programs here in Southern California, including the B-21 Raider, B-2 Spirit, unmanned systems, a portion of F-35 production, National Security Space Launch, and widely dispersed small and medium suppliers, make this area a great cross-section for what DCMA does," said Christensen.

"The director's site visits have been a welcomed vehicle for him to pass his strategic messaging to the DCMA workforce in a very deliberate and direct manner," she said. "The workforce and its leadership gain an overall understanding of the expectations of the director."

In his opening remarks, Tedford highlighted the different types of work performed by mission partners like the Cost and Pricing Command, and work at sites belonging to DCMA Southern California, Special Programs West, Unmanned Systems and DCMA Space Enterprise, Los Angeles.

"You guys have a lot going out here in Southern California so as we looked across the map and the organization, it became evident that Southern California needed to be my first stop," said Tedford.

Tedford also said he was impressed with the strength and resilience of the DCMA workforce through the recent reorganizations, which included the establishment of GSS and Systems Command. While difficult, the change now position the agency to keep pace with the acquisition transformation occurring with Portfolio Acquisition Executive changes.

"I need each and every one of you to think about where you are in that big machine and the piece that you contribute, because it matters. It matters every single day," said Tedford.

DCMA's reputation as a reliable "sensor network" for the defense industrial base comes as a result of leaders within the agency streamlining data collection, improving data integrity, taking deeper looks at supplier capacity, and delivering high-quality dashboards to senior decision makers at critical junctures.

"It's about creating information from the data or the learning from the data that informs high-level decisions," he said. "We are making an impact because of the validity of the data, the value of the data and the way we are operating as a sensor of the defense industrial base for the Department of War."

With the employee engagement topics ranging from DCMA's current fiscal year budget constraints, leveraging artificial intelligence, and the agency's resource workload model validation through the newly published Rand study, Tedford made it a point to bring the focus back to the warfighter.

"Always remember who our customer is, the warfighter. It's easy, in our line of work, to become compliance oriented, to 'follow the checklist.' And it's important, but we also need to be problem solvers," said Tedford. "We need to find ways to get it done for the men and women on the frontline today."