Focus on small business
Image by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District
By Dave Palmer
LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County Post of the Society of American Military Engineers held a small business forum and monthly organizational meeting Nov. 8.
The morning featured panel discussions focusing on small business, many veteran-owned, and how they can team with federal agencies and the Department of Defense in nearly a half-a-billion dollars in small business contracts the District awards annually.
"In the panel discussions we had small business experts from federal and local agencies discussing how small businesses can get work," said Deputy District Commander Lt. Col. Steve Sigloch. "We had an attorney with 30-years in the business of dealing with all the regulations pertaining to small business. He briefed that in the past year almost 300 pages of updates were made, he went into some detail of those updates so small businesses are better prepared, better educated on how to qualify as a small business."
The guest speaker for the meeting, Brig. Gen. Ted Harrison, the Director of the National Contracting Organization, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has a wide range of contracting and procurement experience. For his talk, he focused on operational and contract support planning for emergency and contingency operations.
"As you well know the Corps of Engineers executes its mission by leveraging a very vibrant commercial sector through contracting support in just about every mission area," said Harrison. "On any given day, approximately 300,000 contract employees actively support our various projects around the world."
"Contingency operations, by their very nature, require a very short response time," he said. "Any contract support planning you can do ahead of time, before disasters strike or a contingency occurs, makes execution much more effective."
The past year was an exceptional one. The Corps of Engineers managed emergency operations from extreme flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to severe tornados in Alabama and Missouri.
"We have a series of contracts for our FEMA support mission that are called advance contractor initiatives," said Harrison. "They’re in place now for large scale debris removal, ice and water, temporary housing and power generation. These are the missions that the Corps of Engineers has to support FEMA in disaster response and recovery. We also utilize small businesses in a great way in many of these contracts."
"We met and exceeded all of our goals, in contracting with small business, this past year," added Sigloch. "For fiscal year 2012 we’re increasing goals by at least a percentage point or two in each category, based on historical past practice."
"You really have a commitment from the Chief of Engineers, right on down to the Districts that want to engage with you, that want to understand more about how you like to do business, and what our needs are and open dialog with you," Harrison added.
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