Date: Dec 06, 2005

Picatinny-led joint contracting team wins two national acquisition awards

PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. - A joint contracting team from the Program Executive Office for Ammunition here at Picatinny Arsenal and Joint Munitions Command at Rock Island Arsenal, Ill. has won two prestigious national awards, the Army announced on Dec. 2.

The 40mm Systems Contracting Team, a working group headed by the Program Manager’s Office for Maneuver Ammunition Systems, was selected as this year’s winner of DoD’s Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization Program Manager’s Award for Innovation. The award will be presented to the team on Dec.12 in the Pentagon Hall of Heroes.

The team is being honored for its use of a new small business joint venturing authority that resulted in the awarding of a $1.3 billion contract to two small business teams, the largest small business award in Army history.

On Nov. 16, the group also was presented with the David Packard Award for Acquisition Excellence for the same effort during a ceremony held at Fort Belvoir, Va.

It received the award for reducing life cycle costs, improving the responsiveness of the acquisition system, integrating defense and commercial best practices, promoting continuous process improvements, and accomplishing specific acquisition reform goals.

According to PM MAS officials, the 40mm systems contracting initiative was made possible by forming partnerships early in the process as the Global War on Terror demand for ammunition was addressed by the Army.

“The need to balance deliveries of 40mm Grenade munitions to troops vis-a -vis the need to

support our Small Business industrial base made apparent the need for a much cleaner ‘portfolio/family type management,’ or systems, approach to this problem area,” said William Sanville, former project manager for Maneuver Ammunition Systems.

Robert Kowalski, deputy product manager, said that the objective was to mould nearly 28 small business set-aside contracts, each individually managed, into a portfolio that would benefit both industry and the warfighters.