The Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) is the agency of the United States federal government responsible for performing contract administration services for the Department of Defense and other authorized federal agencies. Its headquarters is at Fort Lee, VA. DCMA often handles Foreign Military Sales contracts.
History[]
Performance of Contract Administration Services (CAS) within DoD has been studied and modified for many years. In the early 1960s, a study was commissioned by the Secretary of Defense to examine the entire DoD contracting process. Known as “Project 60,” the findings pointed to numerous benefits to consolidating contract administration functions. At that time, each agency and military service was performing their own contract administration which resulted in a great amount of duplicate effort. Many of the contract administration responsibilities were eventually moved to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). However, the military services continued to retain oversight of the major acquisition programs.
Defense Contract Management Command (DCMC)[]
The CAS process was again reviewed in 1989. Citing continued problems with the manner in which the services were performing CAS, Defense Management Review Decision (DMRD) 916 recommended the establishment of a joint command to perform CAS for DoD, to ensure that consistent policies and standards were applied to the acquisition process. DCMC was established as a command within the Defense Logistics Agency in February 1990 to satisfy the findings of DMRD 916.
DCMA[]
On March 27, 2000, DCMC was renamed as the Defense Contract Management Agency and established independently from DLA. DoD Directive 5105.64 formally established the purpose and mission of DCMA and, save for specific exceptions detailed in DFARS, all DoD activities are required to delegate contract administration functions to DCMA. The DCMA headquarters moved from northern Virginia to Fort Lee, Va., as part of the federal 2005 Base Realignment and Closure process. The new headquarters was dedicated as Herbert Homer Hall on Sept. 15, 2011. Homer was a DCMA employee killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The current director is Mr. Charlie E. Williams, Jr.
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