As
we enter the new year, I hope that you are all looking
forward to the April 13, 2010 DAU Acquisition Community
Symposium, which will be held at Fort Belvoir, VA and
available via VTC to DAU Regional Campuses and other
selected sites. The theme for the Symposium has been
selected: “Achieving Excellence in a Changing
Acquisition Environment." Simply put, the acquisition
community government and industry need to do a
better job of bringing in programs at or under cost,
and on schedule. The stakes are high bang for the
buck is a reality. The discussions and events of the
symposium are being planned so that participants can
learn what they need to do in order to accomplish cost
and schedule improvement; i.e., the “excellence" part
that we want to achieve. We anticipate that our
speakers and panels will provide guidance on new
approaches to national defense. The Quadrennial Defense
Review should be in development in the early months of
2010, and the agenda feeds off the work on that Review
as well. I urge acquisition practitioners to attend
this valuable learning experience.
We are also working on a hot topic forum to be
presented at Fort Belvoir’s DAU Campus on Wednesday, 24
Feb 2010 in the Packard Center. The theme is Naval
Probability of Program Success (NPoPS) Model what we
need to know about this new model. It will be
presented by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of
the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition.
This is a particularly key topic because there is an
initiative afoot within the Office of SecDef to
standardize - as much as possible - PoPS reporting
within all the military departments. An announcement
will be out soon on this event.
One last item. This year, as in the past two, the
Alumni Association is cooperating with the DAU Research
Department and the Acquisition Review Journal to
sponsor the DAUAA 2010 Research Paper Competition. The
formal name of this Competition is the
Edward
Hirsch Acquisition Writing Award (Hirsch Award) in
honor of the beloved and respected late DAU professor
of systems acquisition Brig General Edward Hirsch, USA.
The theme of the research paper competition is the same
as the theme of the DAU Acquisition Community Symposium
- “Achieving Excellence in a Changing Acquisition
Environment". First prize is $1000; second prize is $500
and third prize is $250. We had great articles the past
two years and are anticipating outstanding articles
once again. The winning articles are given special
visibility in the Acquisition Review Journal published
at the same time as the Symposium.
That's
all for now, see you in April!
Regards, Bill Bahnmaier, President, DAUAA
About Bill Bahnmaier, DAUAA President:
Bill Bahnmaier is a retired Marine and a former (retired)
instructor at the Defense Acquisition University (DAU). In
his last tour of duty as a Marine he was a major system PM the Marine Corps Assault Amphibian. Since retirement, Bahnmaier works as an official volunteer at DAU and also is
a part time consultant and instructor on defense acquisition
matters. He and his wife Peggy reside in Alexandria, VA.
They have 9 nephews and nieces and 15 great nephews and
nieces.
.bmp)
