Vet News: DLA Reaches Out to Service-Disabled Veterans

Kathy Williams, like the rest of the Defense Energy Support Center -- and the rest of the Defense Logistics Agency -- was stumped. She along with other small-business officers and senior procurement executives throughout the Agency were committed, indeed, mandated by Congress, to help service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses gain contracts in the federal government. Yet, when the DLA group convened their quarterly video teleconference in the fall of 2003, the picture was bleak.

In 1999, the president signed legislation that ordered the government to spend 3 percent of its contract dollars on service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses. The law also established the federally chartered National Veterans Business Development Corporation to help Veterans form and expand their small-business concerns. However, that initial legislation did not give federal agencies the authority to set aside procurements specifically for those particular businesses.

Partly because of that lack of authority and partly because, in DLA’s case, the Agency wanted suppliers while most of the veteran-owned companies they encountered offered services, the modest 3 percent objective was far out of reach. No DLA activity, no federal agency could meet the goal.

The quarterly video teleconference thus began with DLA small-business directors and procurement executives once more searching for a solution. That was when Williams offered an idea, something she and the rest of her DESC staff talked about a few weeks earlier.

"We were challenged because for the last year we couldn’t find service-disabled veteran-owned energy companies for DESC," she said. "We had gone to conferences, and that kind of company just wasn’t there. We decided the best way to increase their participation with us would be to hold our own conference."

The conference Williams envisioned would be Agency-wide so everyone could benefit, and funds were too tight for an individual activity to stage such an event. DLA Vice Director Maj. Gen. Mary Saunders, who presided at the video teleconference, and the other participants liked Williams’ idea. The general gave the go-ahead to put the service-disabled veteran-owned small business conference in motion.

With the agreement of Tom Ray, director of the DLA Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization, Williams and her staff took the lead and began work toward the conference. Ray and his staff supported DESC, hoping to draw service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses that sold goods the Agency procured. The small-business associate directors from the Defense Supply Centers in Richmond, Columbus and Philadelphia and DLA Support Services followed up on the commitment in the video teleconference and signed on to support the conference.

Ray soon learned that more than just vendors were interested in the conference. The Air Force, also trying to draw in service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses, was the first to ask for an exhibit table at the conference. The Navy also asked to participate by manning an exhibit table.

With eager participants at hand, Williams and her staff then turned to Jim Regan who worked many times in the past with DLA as director of the George Mason University, Mason Enterprise Center Procurement Technical Assistance Program. The PTAP helps business firms market products and services to federal, state and local governments and is partially funded by DLA. PTAP centers such as George Mason University work to increase contracting activity between small businesses, prime government contractors and the government. Regan, working with the Department of Veterans Affairs and DESC, provided the facility and helped put together the service-disabled veteran-owned small business conference, which drew more than 70 service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses and 214 participants.

"The turnout was better than I expected," Ray said during a break in the June 2 gathering at George Mason. He was especially happy to note that, after five years of DLA struggling to meet the service-disabled veteran-owned small business goal, a federal acquisition regulation published May 5 finally gave federal agencies authority to set aside procurements for service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses.

"The timing is good," Ray said, "because now we have the tool to make awards to the Veterans’ businesses. Now we’ve got to find the businesses to make the awards to. So, this conference comes at the perfect time. Even though we now have the power to set aside certain procurements, we still need to do outreach efforts such as this conference to broaden our program."

Between participants on and in front of the stage, Ray and Williams were pleased with the outcome of the one-day gathering. Richard Connelly, director of DESC, from where Williams and her staff conceived of the conference, led off by telling the audience DLA was looking for their kinds of companies to do business with. "Dick’s a busy guy with the war [in Iraq] going on," Ray said, "but he made it a point to be here. He’;s a Vietnam vet, and emphasized the importance to the Agency of supporting service-disabled Veterans."

Besides Connelly and Regan of PTAP, the conference featured Scott Denniston, director of the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization in the Department of Veterans Affairs, and Anthony ‘Tony’ Eiland, director of government relations and Veterans outreach for the National Veteran Business Development Corporation, more commonly known as The Veterans Corporation. Eiland was emphatic when he told attendees, "We are your lobbyists." His firm’s ties with DLA are even stronger, Ray said, thanks to a memorandum of understanding with the Agency to enhance business assistance and support to Veterans, including service-disabled Veterans.

On a broader scale, the conference, Williams proudly noted, carried the theme, "Serving the War Fighter, Past and Present." "In the future," she said, "we want to include exhibits by large companies that could work with service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses to become subcontractors."

For this year’s event, Williams allowed that DLA had gotten off to a good start. After the initial briefings in the morning, the afternoon session was a combination of workshops and matchmaking. Workshops featured four DLA Business Alliance Award winners: three small and one large business. These companies represent, according to Ray, "DLA’s most outstanding partners, customers and individuals from large, small, small disadvantaged and women-owned small businesses, and agencies employing people who are blind or severely disabled."

For this conference, representatives from Air BP, a large company, along with small companies Procurenet Inc., WATEC Inc. and Benchmade Knife convened in workshops to give attendees insights on their success and talked about how to do business with the government. In matchmaking sessions, small-business representatives met with people from DLA"s supply centers to talk about common needs and set up business contacts.

The emphasis was on everyone taking the initiative, said Peggy Glasheen, DLA program manager for service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses. "We’re out here looking for you," she told the audience, "but you also have to market yourself to us and other buyers. Find out who is the end user, who is the buyer, and put a face on your service."

With the generally positive response, Williams hoped the inaugural conference would become an annual event. "Everybody’s trying to do something to show what Veterans can do for the government, so it’s not just a DLA issue," she said as she thanked those who made the meeting possible. "Besides our DESC staff and the DLA Small-Business Office, everyone pitched in. I had the idea, but that was it. They had to come along and implement it."

The Defense Logistics Agency provides supply support, and technical and logistics services to the military services and to several civilian agencies. Headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Va., DLA is the one source for nearly every consumable item, whether for combat readiness, emergency preparedness or day-to-day operations.

Media Contact: Dawn Dearden (703) 767-6310
[email protected]

SOURCE: PRNewswire