JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas -- The Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center’s financial management analysis team recently won an Undersecretary of Defense Comptroller Award for its work in AFIMSC’s standup.
Brig. Gen. John M. Pletcher, financial management and comptroller director for Air Force Materiel Command, announced AFIMSC had won the below-major-command-level team category award.
The Air Force won seven of the 14 Department of Defense Awards, with Air Force Materiel Command units claiming four of those.
AFIMSC activated in April 2015 to provide the Air Force with a single intermediate-level headquarters staff supporting Air Force-wide installation and expeditionary support activities. It has a $5.4 billion annual budget that supports 77 installations, nine major commands, two direct reporting units and its own six primary subordinate units, or PSUs, and 10 detachments.
It was the mission of the financial analysis team to close out fiscal 2015 for the PSUs while simultaneously laying the groundwork to start funding and supporting installation mission support programs enterprise-wide at initial operating capability. And it all had to be done by Oct. 1, 2015.
“Most people knew we had a provisional headquarters and a great provisional staff that set us up to succeed,” explained Lt. Col. Quy H. Nguyen, chief of the Budget Execution and Analysis Branch. “However, not many people knew that in FY15 we also took execution responsibility for the six PSUs and 10 new detachments to provide funding for and support for their fiscal year close-out.
“We also had the task of establishing accounting records for all installations, detachments and PSUs enterprise-wide because FY16 IOC was just around the corner. We weren’t just designing the plane, so to speak; we were flying it as we designed it.”
During the transition to IOC, team members established and kept up a weekly dialogue with the MAJCOMs and DRUs. They also created more than 80 financial codes and almost 60,000 lines of accounting, which are similar to checking account routing numbers, to convert from fiscal 2015 to fiscal 2016.
Adding complexity to the task was each MAJCOM had its own way of doing business that had to be incorporated into an entirely new organization with new business rules. The team, led by Nguyen and Maj. Edith Coon, leveraged the newly minted Installation and Mission Support Governance Process to develop a detailed strategy and implementation plan, combining 10 unique execution plans into one that was distributed across the Air Force.
“We strove to ensure as seamless funding support for the 35 transferred capabilities to AFIMSC as we could make it,” he said.
The team also led deep dives with all the MAJCOMs on their fiscal 2016 budget execution plans while executing and closing out the fiscal 2015 $1.7 billion budget for the PSUs.
“Much of that went unnoticed. The challenge of that was immense,” Nguyen said.
Failure was not an option.
“We had to be ready to get the lights turned on from Day 1. We opened the doors on Oct. 1 while facing the Budget Control Act,” Coon said. Under the act, $3 billion was allocated, but there were $4 billion in requirements.
“The team is unbelievable. Everyone was excited to roll up their sleeves and get to work. We didn’t have time to waste. Oct. 1 was a hard deadline. We started in July,” Nguyen said.
“It was like sprinting a marathon,” Coon added.
Nguyen compared the standup to a bare-base situation.
“We didn’t have laptops or phones for everyone yet, but we did have a positive attitude from everyone. That was a key to success,” he said.
Leadership support also was key.
“We received good support from the Pentagon and from AFMC,” Nguyen said. “We knew whatever we needed, the Pentagon and AFMC would support. The onus was on us to put in the work. Communication and energy were essential to implementing the big change.”
But supporting leadership is also the role of the financial management team.
“Our goal is to centralize funding but decentralize decision making. Our job is to make sure the commander has the funding to achieve the mission as he or she sees fit,” Coon said. “The ‘IMSC’ letters in AFIMSC stand for ‘I’m supporting commanders.’ That mantra drives everything we do.”
The standup is over, but there’s plenty of work remaining. This team won’t rest on its laurels from the DOD award nor from the Air Force’s Gen. Larry O. Spencer Special Acts and Services Award, Nguyen said.
“There are 77 installations that need us on a daily basis. Anything that goes on anywhere in the world, whether it’s a storm on the East Coast or a civilian evacuation from Europe or a hot tasker from the Pentagon, will flow through us and we’ll have to respond with agile funding support,” Nguyen said.