Contracting specialist broadens career

Huntsville Center Public Affairs
Published Nov. 13, 2015
Melody Hinkle, second from left, reviews a contracting documents with procurement analysts LaVette Buford, Denver Heath and Doug Gosselin during her career broadening assignment with the Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting-Dallas. Hinkle, a procurement analyst with the U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville, spent four-months working at the PARC – Dallas office which manages and administers contracts coming from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Northwest, Southwest, South Pacific and Pacific Ocean Divisions.

Melody Hinkle, second from left, reviews a contracting documents with procurement analysts LaVette Buford, Denver Heath and Doug Gosselin during her career broadening assignment with the Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting-Dallas. Hinkle, a procurement analyst with the U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville, spent four-months working at the PARC – Dallas office which manages and administers contracts coming from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Northwest, Southwest, South Pacific and Pacific Ocean Divisions.

A U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville contracting specialist was recently selected to fill a short-term career broadening assignment at a regional contracting office responsible for providing oversight of contractual actions.

Melody Hinkle spent four-months working for the Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting office (PARC-Dallas) located in Dallas, Texas. The PARC-Dallas manages and administers contracts coming from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Northwest, Southwest, South Pacific and Pacific Ocean Divisions.

Hinkle’s assignment to PARC-Dallas is a result of USACE Contracting efforts to combat attrition and retain talented professionals coming up through the ranks in USACE.

In 2014  Stuart Hazlett, USACE Contracting Director, released the USACE Succession Planning Guide for Contracting Professionals and the USACE Developmental Assignment Guide for Contracting Professionals. These guides formalized USACE contracting employee career development and also allowed for and encouraged employee exchanges for those employees who want to experience a particular type of contracting at a different location, or temporarily serve in a new contracting role.

After seeing an e-mail message about the position coming available, Hinkle recognized the opportunity and applied.

Colleen O’Keefe, Huntsville Center Director of Center Contracting, said Hinkle not only met the required qualifications to fill the position, she was also selected because she is viewed as the next generation of contracting officers who will likely fill the Army’s contracting leadership positions.

“Melody is a srising star in Center Contracting and when the notification came down that PARC-Dallas had a requirement to fill the slot there, Melody was one of the first to raise her hand to go,” O’Keefe said. “After reviewing her resume and noting her accomplishments here at the Center, USACE contracting leadership knew Hinkle was the right person for the PARC-Dallas job.”

Hinkle said her developmental assignment at the PARC-Dallas office was an immense experience as she broadened her horizons as a procurement analyst through exposure to numerous USACE efforts in other regions of the country. 

“My work at the PARC-Dallas certainly expanded my understanding of USACE and Army contracting actions as I became acquainted with a variety of unfamiliar contracting tools such as the Consolidation Determination and Finding (D&F) Memorandum,” Hinkle said.

“This type of document is not a new requirement, but coming from Huntsville Center it was new to me,” she said.

Hinkle explained that Huntsville Center doesn’t use this type of document very often is because of the small number of construction projects executed by the Center. However, she said she quickly learned just how important D&Fs are to the USACE contracting mission.

“The PARC-Dallas office processes a lot of consolidation D&Fs for their regions that must be coordinated by PARC-OC, small business offices and the approval authority as this is the first document that must be approved before they can move forward on their acquisition,” Hinkle said.

Throughout her assignment in Dallas, Hinkle said she not only delved into unfamiliar contracting actions, but also received greater, in-depth understanding of the day-to-day operations of a PARC office. She said balancing all of the areas of responsibility the PARC-Dallas office works with could be overwhelming at times.

“Seeing what happens when you submit a document to the PARC office – its assignment and processing through the stages of approval – was very interesting because PARC-Dallas deals with four Areas of Responsibility (AORs) covering more than sixteen district offices,” Hinkle said. “Most of the acquisitions are construction and architectural-engineering, with a few services in the mix,” she said.

Hinkle said majority of the actions she tackled were Firm Fixed Price (FFP), Multiple Award Task Order Contracts (MATOCS), Single Award Task Order Contracts (SATOCs) and Job Order Contracts (JOCs). 

“The JOCs were very new to me, but I was able to research a lot of information in AFARS (Army Federal Acquisition Regulation) about the requirements of JOCs and how they are used for construction acquisitions,” she said.

Hinkle said she feels expanding her breadth of contracting knowledge through working at the PARC-Dallas will certainly help her career move forward and she recommends Huntsville Center contracting employees volunteer for any developmental opportunity that open up within USACE.

“USACE does a lot of exciting work,” Hinkle said. “During my time at the PARC-Dallas office, I got the opportunity to work on emergency dredgings, construction and Architectural-Engineering acquisitions for Japan; maritime facilities for Alaska, JOC acquisitions — it was a great way to gain valuable acquisition knowledge and it was a very rewarding and fulfilling experience.”