What Goes Around Comes Around...

In 2011, I was part of a group of Camber Corporation employees who went to Texas A&M University’s College Station campus in response to a request by a former Camber client.  This gentleman, a retired Marine Corps Colonel, was working for the Texas A&M System, involved in managing proposals to obtain large Government contracts.  

At the time he contacted Camber, he was involved in responding to a request for proposal (RFP) issued by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA).  It was BARDA’s intent to have one or more Centers for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing (CIADM) set up by the successful bidder(s) responding to this RFP.  The centers were in direct response to a report published in August 2010 entitled “Report to the President on Reengineering the Influenza Vaccine Production Enterprise to Meet the Challenges of Pandemic Influenza,”  

These centers would involve the construction of large and complex laboratories and production facilities capable of developing and producing massive quantities of a vaccine in response to a deadly influenza pandemic.  (I seem to recall that the goal was 120 million doses of vaccine within six months of the adoption of a specific product).   Can you see why I have been reflecting on this recently?

We assembled in a conference room at an appointed time.  In came the Colonel, neatly dressed in a dark business suit, looking very professional.  “I don’t have much time,” he said.  “I’m trying to get thirty faculty members to respond to seventy questions from the Government.  They want the answers by tomorrow night.  Have you ever herded cats?”  He explained that the reason he had called us to meet with him was that in his prior position, while on active duty, our company, Camber Corporation, had provided exceptional support services that helped him excel in his job performance. He then asked if we could introduce ourselves and describe briefly how we might help him in his proposal-developing effort.  He was in a hurry.  The operative word was “briefly.

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Unfortunately, some of my colleagues missed the message.  They rambled on about their impressive resumes and broad professional experience.  Some droned on for several minutes. Finally, it was my turn to speak as the last in line. I took less than thirty seconds for my response, ending with, “Colonel, I’d love the opportunity to support you on this proposal.”  He contacted us when we returned to Huntsville.  I was the only one he wanted to hire to come back to College Station.  I’m convinced to this day that my brevity and consideration of his request was the main reason I was called back.

One of the skills I had mentioned in my brief oral portfolio was planning and scheduling large, complex programs.  When I had arrived back in College Station and presented myself to our new client, he made my job clear.  “I need for you to develop a detailed schedule of the way we will execute this job from beginning to end.  I have write-ups from the researchers and the medical experts and the construction firms that are going to build the facilities.  I need you to read all their narratives and put it all together in a cohesive schedule.”  The proposal was due in about three weeks.  I told him I’d give it my best shot.

Soon, I was poring over a pile of inputs from team members.  There were multiple large construction firms that had joined the team.  Part of the job involved constructing a large office complex, a state-of-the-art biological laboratory facility with the highest possible biological safety level as defined by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and NIH, and of course, the vaccine production facility, which would look like a moderately-sized factory.  Each of these construction firms had taken a different approach toward their portion of the schedule. Where one went to exquisite detail in describing their approach, another was described in vague, summary detail.  Integrating them would be a challenge.

Regarding the laboratory facility, someone had laid out a precise roadmap that included the sequence with which equipment had to be installed and tested.  I would need to determine the lead time for acquiring much of the laboratory gear in order to illustrate the ordering process in detail that would enable the orderly integration of the lab.  I began to construct the overall framework of an integrated schedule, making dozens of phone calls to clarify how the pieces would come together to create this massive pandemic response complex.

Three weeks later, just in time to be included with the massive proposal, my job was successfully completed.  I presented the proposal team with a schedule of nearly 1,500 tasks, all logically integrated, with data on who was assigned to perform the task, where it would be performed, start and end dates, accounting codes, and references to the Statement of Work sections that had required the task.  By employing the database functions contained in the scheduling software, a user could reorient the display to satisfy many different stakeholders. 

The A&M Team was extremely pleased with the product I contributed to their proposal.  More importantly, they went on to win one of the awards.  Initial funding was around $176 Million, with future growth potential of well over $1B.

Dr. Brett Giroir

I worked on this proposal seven days a week while I was in College Station.  One of the proposal team members with whom I worked (literally side-by-side, as our offices were in adjacent spaces) was Dr, Brett Giroir, who was at that time Vice Chancellor for the Texas A&M University System, and had come to the A&M System having served as Director of DARPA's Defense Science Office from 2004 to 2008.  Just a few days ago. I was watching the Corona Virus Task Force daily briefing when I saw none other than Dr. Giroir step to the podium.  He is now a four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, who currently serves as the Assistant Secretary for Health under the Trump administration.  Among his collateral duties, he concurrently serves as the director of the U.S. coronavirus diagnostic testing.  Talk about a small world!