RICHMOND, Va. –
Defense Contract Management Agency’s Technical Directorate hosted their first Engineering, Manufacturing and Software Summit focused on consistent messaging across its communities.
The event included more than 140 in-person attendees and an additional 692 virtual participants.
The summit focused on two themes: TEAM and SKIP. TEAM embraced the concept of “Together Everyone Achieves More” and SKIP focused on “Shared Knowledge is Power.” Organizers combined both acronyms to achieve the summit’s goal of highlighting how effective communication cultivates the success of policy, tools and training.
Dr. Juanita Christensen, TD’s executive director, attended the summit and spoke to the importance of leveraging and supporting the work being conducted at operational units and contract management offices.
“We’ve come together in such a way to create a collaborative environment with open conversations and questions,” said Christensen. “We try to determine root-cause analysis on where there may be a disconnect or how we, at the headquarters, can better support the field with the information, the policies we’re driving, and the tools we’re providing.”
Operational units, supervisors and contract management team members attended the event. According to feedback the event coordinators received, people found “The Future of Data Management” as one of the most insightful topics.
“(Data management) is critical to everyone as the tactical field data should be properly assessed to make risk-based decisions to present to agency headquarters,” said Christopher Brust, director of TD’s engineering and manufacturing division. “We, at headquarters, then gain strategic insight from the field that can be relayed to our customers, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and congressional leaders.”
DCMA's multifunctional workforce performs collaborative, consistent and continuous activities, which contributes to the agency achieving its mission to support the warfighter. Because of this work environment, summit presenters addressed lessons learned to help provide a path forward for future required alignments across both geographical and functional aspects of the agency’s mission, to include Vision 2026.
Vision 2026 is an initiative designed to focus and energize DCMA’s mission now and in the future with targeted change in multiple areas.
“The summit helped provide knowledge to the in-person and virtual attendees that they could take back and share with their teams to prepare for current and future change,” Brust said. “Because of its success, we plan on hosting more summits.”
For those who were unable to attend or are interested in following up with the frequently asked questions, click here (login required) for more information and recordings from the summit.