United States Army contingency contracting operations: emerging roles, procedures, and challenges facing Contracting professionals

Abstract

This Joint Applied Project analyzed the extent to which Army leadership has acknowledged and is acting upon key improvement recommendations made by the Gansler Report (2007). This project explores roles, procedures, principles and emerging issues facing contingency contracting professionals in respect to their responsibilities in expeditionary operations. Basic principles of contingency contracting and current literature relative to Army expeditionary operations were analyzed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with both military and civilian acquisition professionals. Additionally, researcher developed surveys were distributed amongst deployed contingency contracting officers/specialists in order to approach this topic with a 'boots on the ground' perspective. From the research conducted, recommendations are provided that the Army can implement to improve modern wartime contingency contracting and better prepare and train the contracting workforce to support future contingency operations.