QAV – a new approach to contract compliance

  • Published
  • By Joe B. Wiles
  • 71st Flying Training Wing Public Affairs
VANCE AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. --  The folks in QAV have a big charter before them - to find a way to provide standardized training and a standardized approach to quality assurance and contract compliance. "It does make one feel needed," said Maj. Paul Davis, a member of Vance's newest organization.

The Quality Assurance standardization and evaluation program - QAV - will focus on contract compliance as a core competency, one of Col. Chris Nowland's primary goals as the 71st Flying Training Wing commander. To reach that goal, Colonel Nowland brought together Lt. Col. William Browne, Major Davis and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Ian Whitcom to form QAV. 

"The commander told Colonel Browne the end result he wanted and to let him know what resources he needed," said Major Davis. "We've been doing our best ever since." 

That was almost three months ago. Since then the folks in QAV have learned a lot about Vance's primary service contract with CSC Applied Technologies LLC, and the 50 quality assurance evaluators whose job it is to ensure CSC complies with that contract - and equally important - that Vance doesn't expect work that is not in that contract. 

"With contracting, there is a requirement for a business mindset," said Major Davis. "As an aviator, I've only been taught to fly. Any business mindset I have was acquired as a business major in college and over the past two years working with Tom Patton, Vance's administrative contract officer." 

So Major Davis does a lot of reading, but not traditional business books by folks like Peter Drucker, Tom Peters or Edward Deming. He reads the Federal Acquisition Regulation and Air Force instructions on contracting. Oh yeah, and the $400 million CSC contract - a huge volume covering aircraft maintenance and just about every support function on base. 

"Colonel Nowland decided we needed to try something new to assure contract compliance. We didn't have a template to work from," said Major Davis, "so we went to the QAEs - and listened." 

Colonel Browne and Major Davis held meetings with QAEs from different functional areas on base. "We would go in and listen, giving them a chance to tell us what is upsetting them, what frustrated them, to pour it all out," said Major Davis. 

"We have found that everyone is very mission orientated and poised to succeed, but they are feeling overwhelmed," he said. "Our current contract was bid during Air Force directed transformations in civil engineering, information technology, force support and logistics. The contract we awarded is not the contract we operate with. 

"Couple the resulting required contract changes with personnel cuts from Program Budget Decision 720 and 365-day deployments and you create severe challenges for our QAEs," said Major Davis. "Tom Patton identified these problem areas two years ago. He directed multiple Air Force Smart Operations for the 21st Century events to lean out our processes and make the future successful. QAV is a spin-off of one of those events," he said. 

"Fortunately, we also discovered that across the board Vance has a very productive approach to managing this contract," Major Davis said. 

Two major things came out of the meetings with the QAEs. "First, we need to educate Team Vance that everyone is a customer," said Major Davis. "Everyone interacts with CSC on a daily basis. Everyone needs to understand that relationship -- and it is a complicated one." 

The second thing, he said, is that the QAEs at Vance do a fabulous job of organizing, scheduling, executing and following up on the work they do -- but there is no historical record. Their processes haven't been documented adequately in an operating instruction. 

"Some of the best and brightest out there have great ideas and they execute them very nicely," said Major Davis. "Donita Hazlet in Civil Engineers, Don Blose in the Communications Squadron and Jeff Patton in Services -- they all have these fantastic ways of doing business. Their methods need to be put into instructions so the next person that comes along doesn't have the option of not following these best practices."