Army officials pledge to beef up contracting workforce

The Army is planning to reorganize its procurement leadership structure and increase its contracting workforce by 1,400 over the next two to three years, Army officials said Thursday.

The pledge came a little more than a month after an independent commission to review Army expeditionary contracting determined that the service was facing systemic institutional challenges in conducting expeditionary contracting, and that reform was urgently needed.

Claude Bolton, the Army's top procurement official, who recently announced that he will resign as of Jan. 2, told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee Thursday that the Army is "accelerating plans to set up the military structure recommended by the commission." It has approved a contracting command, to be headed by a two-star general, as well as a one-star-level expeditionary contracting command. Bolton said the service is in the process of identifying people to fill the new positions.

The commission had recommended the creation of a single Army contracting command that would be responsible for making acquisition and contract management a "high-quality core competence." The panel said creating senior positions would give those interested in acquisition careers the potential for promotion.

Bolton said the Army will expand its acquisition workforce by adding about 1,000 civilians and 400 military personnel, as the commission also recommended, but the increase will not happen overnight.

Bolton and his deputy, Lt. Gen. Ross Thompson, told the committee that it would likely take two to three years to fill the new positions and anywhere from five to 10 years before the expanded workforce is fully trained and certified. Contracting vacancies are a governmentwide problem, and competition for qualified employees is fierce.

The commission, headed by Jacques Gansler, former undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, found that while the Army's acquisition workload increased sevenfold in recent years, the contracting workforce had been stagnant or declining. While the Defense Department is struggling with procurement workforce issues across all services, the problem is particularly pronounced in the Army.

According to the report and Gansler's testimony before the subcommittee, the Air Force has stepped into the lead acquisition role in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, despite being responsible for a relatively small share of procurement spending.

"One of the reasons the Air Force model is more successful in the case of contracting is that they start their people as second lieutenants in the contracting field," Gansler said. "The number of years of experience matters."

The commission recommended that the Army follow a similar model, but not at the expense of time spent in combat roles. "We do recommend they begin as second lieutenants, but that they spend two or three years in combat positions so they understand the real Army -- what the objectives are -- and muddy their shoes," Gansler said.

While much of the needed reform must come within the Army, Gansler said some legislative action also is required. He urged Congress to appropriate the resources necessary for the Army to increase its contracting workforce.