DCMA plays key role at NCMA World Congress contract workshop

SEATTLE -

The Defense Contract Management Agency played an instrumental role at the National Contract Management Association, or NCMA, World Congress, at the Seattle Convention Center, July 22.

Robin Thornton, a Contract Lifecycle Management Centercontract specialist, partnered with Science Application International Corporation, or SAIC, and its representative Sunshine Eaton at the event, which is the nation's leading forum for contract management, procurement, and acquisition professionals.

Thornton and Eaton hosted a session named "We're Not #1! The Importance of Contract Closeout "and discussed innovative approaches to work together toward reducing Flexibly Priced Contracts, or FPC's.

"It's odd for a company to not focus on being number one, because every company wants to be the top in everything it does," Thornton said. "In this case, SAIC were number one on the DCMA Overaged List. That's not a good place to be because they had the most overaged FPC's for the entire agency."

In fiscal year 2020, SAICwasthe number one contractorforoveragedFPCs for DCMA, Thornton said.

"They had over 7,000 overaged FPCsdue to purchasing another company that was also on the list," Thornton explained."SAIC realigned itscloseout team to focus on significantly reducing its overaged FPCsbydevelopinga partnership with the CLMC. Using good business judgment and innovative approaches, we were able achieve this goal."

The achievement was supported by SAIC's ability to reengineer their Closeout Division processes to align with DCMA's closeout efforts and participate in identifying paths forward to reduce more complex overaged FPCs.

Thornton and Eaton discussed the processes that achieved this goal, that included the collaborative efforts of the Defense Contract Auditing Agency, Defense Finance and Accounting Serviceand DCMA subject matter experts.

"We implemented streamlining contract closeout tools such asLow Risk Quick Closeout, Low Risk Closeout,and Expedited Contract Closeout processes to close 6,155 of SAIC's overaged FPCs," Thornton said. "As a result, by end of fiscal year 2023, SAIC moved from number one to ten and continues to race toward the bottom."

Overall, DCMA reduced all overaged FPCs from 71,653 in 2015, to 27,000 by the end of 2023, a reduction of 63%, Thornton said.

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