OFPP recognizes acquisition accomplishments

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy recognized the merits in government contracting today when it handed out four Shine awards.“This is a real moment of celebration for us,” said Paul Denett, OFPP administrator. He said there is too much bad publicity.“We never recognize our good accomplishments enough,” he said. “We think we do, but we don’t.”Jean Todd, chief of contracting at the Army Corps of Engineers’ Louisiana Recovery Field Office, won the Ida Ustad Award for Excellence in Acquisition, which includes a $5,000 prize. Todd set up an on-site, full-service contracting office amid the chaos of Hurricane Katrina. Ustad, for whom the award is named, was a senior procurement official at the General Services Administration.The Army’s Joint Contracting Command for Iraq and Afghanistan won the Chief Acquisition Officers Council Acquisition Management Innovations in Contract Management Award for the defense sector. The command created effects-based contracting, which synchronizes contracting resources and capabilities in time, space and purpose to help warfighters. Under a 26-day deadline, the command built a judicial complex and a 900-person detainee prison, and expanded other facilities.The information technology team in the procurement operations division of the Agriculture Department’s Office of Procurement and Property Management won the same CAO Council award for the civilian sector. The team developed performance metrics for buying IT products and services for USDA service centers and the Office of the Chief Information Officer.The Federal Acquisition Regulation Acquisition Law Team won the FAR Team Award for working diligently on FAR cases involving the Buy America reporting requirement, Lobbying Disclosure Act, and Contractor Code of Ethics and Business Conduct, among other cases.The FAR Acquisition Strategy Team also received the award for developing recommendations for nine complex and significant FAR cases including commercial time-and-material/labor-hour contracts, emergency acquisitions and Alaska native corporations, among others.The Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons and its contracting company, Hensel Phelps, won the Alternative Dispute Resolution Award for using an innovative partnering approach in constructing a new federal correctional facility on time, on budget and without formal claims or appeals. It is also the first environmentally friendly federal institution.The awards were given at the Federal Acquisition Institute’s Federal Acquisition Conference and Exposition in Washington.