US Army steps up Warzone operational contracting controls

The U.S. Army has more than doubled the amount of Contracting Officers Representatives, or CORs, in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last year in an effort to improve oversight and help rebuild local communities, service officials said. "We've spent a lot of time determining how best to get the oversight out there," said Col. Timothy Dixon, military deputy to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Procurement. Within the last year, the number of CORs in Iraq has jumped from a 59-percent fill rate up to a 94-percent fill rate, Dixon said. Similarly, the number of CORs in Afghanistan has more than doubled, jumping from a 38-percent fill rate in January of last year to an 80-percent fill rate by January of this year. In short, the Army has added hundreds of CORs to the war zone to help oversee local contracting and ensure that goods and services arrive as paid for, Dixon said. Prior to deployment, CORs must complete a thorough training process, said Lt. Col. John Coombs, Chief of Staff, Operational Contracting Support and Policy Directorate Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary. "The Army recently issued a directive to all deploying units requiring Commanders to select and train CORs before they arrive in theater. In addition to online training on COR duties and ethics, the Expeditionary Contracting Command is proving on-site training to deploying units based on lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan," Coombs said. The efforts are making a difference, Coombs and Dixon said. "What we've been working on is getting more Contracting Officers Representatives identified and trained up as part of the pre-deployment process so that when they get into theater they are already ready to go. In most cases now the contracting officers in theater are able to pre-brief the CORs as they coming over with the types of contracts they are going to be dealing with," said Dixon. For example, the CORs may have the responsibility to monitor the amounts of food, water and electrical power being delivered to a certain forward operating base to ensure the proper quantities arrive, Dixon said. "We're doing better in Iraq but that of course is a much more mature theater. In Afghanistan we are still advancing into the base camps and expanding as part of the surge that we have had and the surge we are going to have. We are still working to get the number of CORs there higher," Dixon said. One of the key programs in Afghanistan and Iraq that is related to these efforts is called Commanders Emergency Response Program, or CERP a way for local commanders to respond to urgent needs in local war zone communities by funneling money to specific projects.