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Original Date: 07/10/2006
Revision Date: / /
Best Practice : Public-Private Partnering
Tobyhanna Army Depot has formed a full-time staff dedicated to finding and forming strategic partnering opportunities, with Tobyhanna acting in the capacity of a subcontractor to private industry. By partnering with Tobyhanna, industries receive full logistics support to their programs in the field and at the depot to provide the most cost-effective quality products and services in support of the warfighter.
As an Army full-service engineering organization, Tobyhanna Army Depot (TYAD) provides contractors solutions for their government partnership requirements. With the facility’s capabilities often not being considered by industry teams, TYAD began to actively market its capabilities and its ability to partner with private industry and government program managers. TYAD’s previous strategy was to take a more passive role without expending much effort to seek work from private industry.
In 2000 the depot reviewed seven applicable statutes under Title 10 of the U.S. Code to determine those that support a Department of Defense Working Capital Fund activity, such as TYAD performing work for private parties. Review by the legal and contracting teams determined that TYAD could be more proactive in providing services that would support the efficient acquisition and support of military systems. TYAD attributes that benefit the private sector by providing better value to the warfighter include an existing worldwide support infrastructure that can be leveraged and the ability to effectively make or integrate electronics. The business office organization was modified and a full-time group was organized to find and facilitate work-gaining teaming arrangements with private contractors to actively market TYAD capabilities by:
Looking for opportunities to become involved in long-range and/or new programs
Finding forums to provide private industries with information about capabilities not widely known in the private sector
Securing overarching partnerships with private industries
Providing contractors one TYAD employee for all their partnership efforts
Expediting the partnering process by having documents in place (e.g., nondisclosure agreements and teaming agreements)
TYAD used the knowledge of its existing commodity managers and targeted contractors with secured, large contracts in areas of TYAD’s core competencies. TYAD also has small- and medium-size private partners with good technical expertise that are lacking adequate integration ability or the ability to provide adequate logistics support. Some of these partnerships provide certain elements of integrated logistics support to the contractor for the warfighter. TYAD has used flexibility given by recent authoritative changes to fully engage with private industry partners by providing sales on a fixed-price basis; tailored rates or prices (e.g., certain overhead elements can be removed from rate if not applicable); and multi-year, fixed-price agreements.
As of March 2006, TYAD had entered into a total of 123 partnerships, 29 of which are currently generating in excess of $18 million in 2006 revenue. TYAD has seen substantial increases in work, with $2.4 million in revenue in 2004 and $5.2 million in 2005 from private-party agreements. The return on investment in effort to obtain this work was 18 to 1 in 2006.
By partnering with TYAD, private industries are able to use the organic industrial base to complement its own capabilities, creating a win-win situation for both industry and government. Partnering also enables industry to leverage existing TYAD capabilities to avoid generating extensive and unnecessary overhead in sharing depot expertise while TYAD, in turn, continues to learn from industry best practices and preserves the depot’s core capabilities.
For more information see the
Point of Contact for this survey.
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