Defense Contract Management Agency
Template:Distinguish2 The Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) is the agency of the United States federal government responsible for performing contract administration services for the Department of Defense and other authorized federal agencies. Its headquarters is at Fort Lee, VA. DCMA often handles Foreign Military Sales contracts.
History
Contract administration services (CAS) within DoD have been studied and modified for many years. In the early 1960s, a study was commissioned by the Secretary of Defense to examine the entire DoD contracting process. Known as "Project 60," the findings pointed to numerous benefits of consolidating contract administration functions. At that time, each agency and military service was performing its own contract administration, which resulted in a great amount of duplicate effort. Many of the contract administration responsibilities were eventually moved to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). However, the military services continued to retain oversight of the major acquisition programs.
Defense Contract Management Command (DCMC)
The CAS process was again reviewed in 1989. Citing continued problems with the manner in which the services were performing CAS, Defense Management Review Decision (DMRD) 916 recommended the establishment of a joint command to perform CAS for DoD, to ensure that consistent policies and standards were applied to the acquisition process. DCMC was established as a command within the Defense Logistics Agency in February 1990 to satisfy the findings of DMRD 916.
DCMA
On September 27, 2000, DCMC was renamed as the Defense Contract Management Agency and established independently from DLA. DoD Directive 5105.64 formally established the purpose and mission of DCMA and, save for specific exceptions detailed in DFARS, all DoD activities are required to delegate contract administration functions to DCMA.
The DCMA headquarters moved from northern Virginia to Fort Lee, Virginia, as part of the federal 2005 Base Realignment and Closure process. The new headquarters was dedicated as Herbert Homer Hall on September 15, 2011. Homer was a DCMA employee killed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.[1]
According to the DoD's Fiscal Year 2015 Budget Estimate, DCMA has 10,637 civilian and 472 military personnel, located in over 740 locations, managing over 19,000 contractors and nearly 350,000 active contracts. The operations and maintenance budget estimate for fiscal year 2015 was roughly $1.3 billion. [2]
The current director is Lieutenant General Wendy M. Masiello, U.S. Air Force.[3]
References
- ^ DCMA news release (September 1, 2011). "DCMA to officially open new HQ on Fort Lee".
- ^ "Fiscal Year 2015 Budget Estimates Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA)" (PDF). March 2014. Retrieved July 8, 2015.
- ^ "Director's Message". DCMA Communicator. Fall 2014. Retrieved April 3, 2015.
External links
