18th CONS, CPTS close out fiscal year 2013

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Hailey Davis
  • 18th Wing Public Affairs
KADENA AIR BASE, Japan --  (Editor's note: This is the final article in a series of articles about fiscal year 2013 close out.)

Members of the 18th Comptroller and Contracting Squadrons successfully closed out the fiscal year budget, working long hours and through a local operational readiness exercise.

On the final day of the fiscal year, personnel closed out a left over amount of $200,000 and a soft close occurred Sept. 20.

By preparing for the soft close, contracting and comptroller personnel were able to close out 98 percent of the year's budget, leaving only 2 percent, or $2.5 million, to be taken care of by close out.

"A soft close is where we try to obligate all the tangible real money we actually have," said Master Sgt. Chad Obermiller, 18th CONS Commercial Acquisitions flight chief. "Contracting has to have all contracts that could possibly be awarded (by Sept. 20). This allows finance to see, with 10 days (left during closeout), what is left in the budget."

Overall, 18th CPTS oversaw more than $2.2 million in end-of-year purchase requests since Aug. 1, $20.8 million in contracts since mid-September and funded 69 unfunded items totaling $8.1 million. The 18th CONS as a whole oversaw 278 actions, totaling in $44.8 million during the month of September.

"We develop what we call the 'unfunded wish list' and each group puts together a list of their top 10 to 15 items that, if funding falls, these are the things we want to get," Obermiller said.

Last year, Kadena bought new pews for the chapel and upgraded the chapel sound system, and bought dorm furniture and new equipment for the dog park with extra funds. This year, the priorities included new computers for the 18th Wing Command Post, NEXRAD (a communication radar site), mobile dehumidifier units for the F-22 which takes moisture from the engines, and a hazardous material trailer, among others.

With every fiscal year close out comes many obstacles such as local operational readiness exercises.

"We didn't have many obstacles outside of getting adequate requirements and figuring out what the customers need and handling that," Obermiller said. "We were exempt during the LORE, but the problem there was our customers were not here to answer our questions so some things were delayed because of the LORE."

Overall, contracting and comptroller personnel, along with approximately 103 resource advisors across Kadena, aided in a successful fiscal year close out.

"The goal at the end of fiscal year is getting all the money obligated. At the end of the day, getting the customer the work they wanted, on time and in compliance is our mission statement," Obermiller said. "Sometimes what the customer says they want isn't what they need, so we find out what they need and give them what they need on time. There was nothing that came down this year that we needed money for that we could not execute so that's always a successful end of fiscal year for contracting."