By Jeff Mullin
In 1960, the concept of civilian contractors providing support for military base functions was a new one.
No longer. Vance Air Force Base not only was the first Air Force pilot training base to employ contractors to do everything from aircraft maintenance to groundskeeping, but it is now the model for what has become a common practice.
Today Vance is the most cost-efficient pilot training base in the Air Force, and one reason is its relationship with Computer Sciences Corp., the contractor that employs some 1,000 workers in various capacities at the base.
“I’ve got a very veteran work force,” said John Cole, program manager for CSC at Vance. “Our work force is familiar with the base, they have great skills, they know the people, they have pride of ownership.”
Serv-Air was the contractor from 1960-1972, when the contract was assumed by Northrop, later Northrop Grumman. DynCorp took over the contract in July 2000. CSC bought DynCorp in December 2002.
Cole said he expects the battle for the Vance contract to be a lively one before it expires in 2007. The last 7-year contract was won for a bid of $392.7 million.
“There will be a lot of big competitors come in for this one,” said Cole. “You’re going to see very large companies trying to win this contract. So it makes us keep our pencils sharp.”
CSC’s mechanics have been in the middle of Vance’s transition from the T-37 to the T-6A Texan II as the primary training aircraft. Veteran T-37 mechanics have had to learn the ins and outs of the new turbo-prop T-6.
“The T-6 transition has just gone extremely well,” said Cole. There are some 49 T-6s on the ramp at Vance now, with the final T-37 scheduled to leave the base sometime this fall.
“We’ve got guys up there maintaining the T-6 and not working on the T-37 and vice versa,” said Cole. “It robs us as some of our manpower.”
Cole said he doesn’t expect CSC’s employment level to be affected significantly by decisions made by the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission. Vance is scheduled to take on some of the undergraduate pilot training mission from Moody AFB in Georgia, as well as Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals, also moving from Moody. In addition, Vance will be home to an $8.7 million Armed Forces Reserve Center.
“We’re right-sized for what’s going on here at Vance,” said Cole.
As he spoke, Cole sat among packing boxes in his new office in the $15 million consolidated logistics center that will have its official ribbon-cutting sometime this spring. The center brings together several offices and departments that have been scattered around the base, some in World War II-era buildings.
As the logistics center work is nearly complete, several other projects on base are ongoing or in the planning stages. The force protection project will eventually move Vance’s main gates north and build new gate houses, a new visitor’s center and a connecting road between the east and west gates. A new veterinary clinic is under construction, while the bowling center is being expanded. A new fuel cell repair facility and a new control tower are in the planning stages, as well.
In the five years since DynCorp and CSC have held the contract, some $100 million in construction has been done at the base.
“That’s a lot in anybody’s language,” said Cole.
CSC’s contract with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 898 expires later this year, and negotiations will begin soon. In 2004, the base, the contractor and the union entered into a High Performance Work Organization agreement, the first at any Air Force base. The agreement gives every employee a voice in CSC’s day-to-day operations at the base.
“It has dramatically decreased the number of arbitrations we have had with the union,” said Cole. “We have a very good partnership where the union participates much more in the management of this contract.”
In the biennial Operational Readiness Inspection last summer, Vance received an overall excellent rating. CSC underwent its own inspection, but was not graded on the same scale as the base as a whole. Instead, the contractor received a “satisfactory” rating.
“I think had we been rated on the same system, we would have been rated excellent like the wing,” said Cole. “Our people almost take a little offense that we aren’t graded the same as the Air Force.”
