Yearend closeout culminates fiscal journey of teamwork

  • Published
  • By Ed Shannon
  • Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center Public Affairs
As the calendar moved from Sept. 30 to Oct. 1, budget experts at the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center paused briefly to take a deep breath. The organization’s whirlwind first year of managing and distributing funds to Air Force units worldwide had just culminated in a successful end-of-year closeout.

The closeout success represented an exclamation point at the end of an epic year, said Col. Larry Rice Jr., AFIMSC Comptroller.

“The real takeaway from our first year in existence is the journey,” Rice said. “We started with almost nothing, and we had about 50 percent of our people. Accounting structures were not in place when we started. Looking back now, while the process was not always the smoothest, the team did a great job supporting commanders.”

AFIMSC inherited 10 major command execution plans and forged an initial distribution strategy with more than $1 billion in unfunded requirements. Immediately thereafter, the Air Staff tasked AFIMSC with working the mid-year review process, adding to an already high operations tempo, Rice said, noting the unit not only established a budgeting process, but it simultaneously executed the process at a volume never before accomplished by a single unit.

“We had $4 billion of total obligation authority transferred to AFIMSC,” Rice said, “and we handled pop-up requirements throughout the year. We started with no processes in place, no continuity and an Air Force-wide breadth of issues to deal with.”

Budget Execution and Analysis Chief Lt. Col. Quy Nguyen said the organization leveraged expertise at 10 unit detachments and at AFIMSC’s six primary subordinate units to manage a “global financial operation.”

“We listened to their thoughts and processes and, through our partnership, we gained trust,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen’s staff evaluated metrics – or what he called “vital signs” – and focused on the low 15 installations across the Air Force in terms of funding execution.

“At one of our installations, we found staff had dwindled and it impacted the unit’s ability to execute funds,” Nguyen said. “So, we worked through the detachment for assistance to the unit.”

As a result, AFIMSC obligated 82.6 percent of funds on hand by the end of July, exceeding the Air Force execution requirement of 80 percent, which represents the highest percentage Nguyen has seen in his 21-year career.

Rice said AFIMSC’s Installation Support Directorate played a key role in validating requirements and financial managers at detachment staffs evolved to directly engage with units on execution issues.

“Our PSU partners were huge,” Rice said. “The Air Force Civil Engineer Center executed more than 1,600 projects valuing more than $1.5 billion and a record construction task order for centralized FSRM (Facilities Sustainment, Restoration and Modernization) projects.”

Rice added the Air Force Security Forces Center received funding at the end of the fiscal year for critical defender requirements, and the center executed the funding on time. The Air Force Installation Contracting Agency, operating location directors, and installation contracting squadrons were also invaluable in the rapid acquisition and execution of these funds.

“If any one of those teaming pieces became problematic, the process would have been more difficult and we would not have had as many favorable results,” he said.

AFIMSC paired the strong teaming approach with transparent communication through the governance structure to achieve success. In establishing AFIMSC, the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff wanted the new organization to control resources to best determine where to put the next installation and mission support dollar.

“That was a huge change – moving the decision point from MAJCOMs to AFIMSC, and naturally, it was uncomfortable at first,” Rice said.

AFIMSC worked to build trust through multiple, deliberate communication events during the fiscal year. AFIMSC officials briefed all MAJCOM vice commanders during four major execution year drills, including initial distribution, mid-year review, FY17 execution plan, and the end of year strategy.

“MAJCOM senior leaders saw how we made resourcing decisions, and we received feedback on the most pressing operational requirements,” Rice said. “We tried hard to make sure their requirements were prioritized and funded as much as possible.

“I took away from our first year the importance of communication because it is easy to become disenfranchised if you don’t receive information about a new process,” Rice said. “Even if it’s a tough message, at least if you are informed, there’s not a sense of disengagement.”

That communication and customer focus remained evident during end of year closeout, said Capt. Bill Kiser, AFIMSC Financial Integration Officer and end of year closeout project officer.

“We provided an initial structure to the end of year closeout process,” said Kiser, who obtained a checklist from another major command and adapted it to AFIMSC’s end of year scope. “We wrote guidance for installations to run the checklist and tested it twice before going final.”

He said the closeout went as planned and practiced.

“We executed our strategy which included covering wing commanders’ top three items among other things, and with Major Coon’s work in scraping up funds, we were actually able to cover even more, which is a darned good year,” Kiser said.

Maj. Edith Dawn Coon was instrumental behind the scenes finding money from every source possible. She is a tireless researcher who caught many issues before they became a problem, Rice said.

She took her responsibility for locating funding personally, noting her initials EDC stand for Every Dollar Counts. She worked closely with budget analysts and installations to find funding that may not be fully executed at a particular installation but could be combined with similar funding at other installations to address the next most important requirement.

“Let’s say an installation has a $40 million budget, and they were not able to execute $10 thousand,” she explained. “That might not seem like a lot of funding, but when you find $10 thousand at several installations, the money adds up. We were able to buy down the next FSRM project with the collective funding we located.”

In AFIMSC’s second year, Rice anticipates less of an introduction to the organization and more work toward improving processes and opportunities for standardization.

“As our staff worked issues, you could see light bulbs come on,” said Rice, referring to staff members’ ideas to improve the process. With standardization, he said the Air Force will see some dollar and man-hour savings and other efforts will prove to be better ways of doing business.

“When we started on our journey, the major commands and installations didn’t know what our process was going to be – how this was going to work,” he said. “We came a long way in a short 14 months and end-of-year put an exclamation point on it. We turned one full crank on the fiscal cycle, and it culminated in a successful end-of-year closeout.”