ALCOAST 387/24 - OCT 2024 FISCAL YEAR 2023 DHS HONORARY ACQUISITION AWARD WINNERS

R 041600Z OCT 24 MID120001437900U
FM COMDT COGARD WASHINGTON DC
TO ALCOAST
BT
UNCLAS
ALCOAST 387/24
SSIC 5350
SUBJ: FISCAL YEAR 2023 DHS HONORARY ACQUISITION AWARD WINNERS
1. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) honored six members
of the Coast Guard workforce with Honorary Acquisition Program
Management Awards for superior performance during fiscal year (FY)
2023. The annual awards recognize individuals and teams who have
demonstrated the highest level of professional excellence in
attaining acquisition program success.
2. DHS Acquisition Program Manager (PM) of the Year -
LCDR Beau Belanger.
    a. This award recognizes a PM who excelled in leadership,
planning, funding management, staff development, and communication,
delivering on time, within budget, and meeting performance goals in
FY 2023. They overcame risks with innovative solutions and improved
management processes.
    b. LCDR Belanger, as PM for the $70M G-550 aircraft acquisition,
set a gold standard for DHS acquisitions. Under his leadership, the
program delivered a FAA-certified C-37B ahead of schedule, under
budget and meeting all Key Performance Parameters. CG-102, the
aircraft, is now the primary command and control asset for DHS. LCDR
Belanger managed its warranty period, obtained maintenance services,
and built a robust team to secure a three-year Authority to Operate
(ATO). He led the development of innovative cybersecurity
strategies, saving over $500K and ensuring compliance with 458 cyber
controls. His leadership facilitated 1,100 flight hours for senior
executive missions.
3. DHS Acquisition Program Support Professional of the Year -
Ms. Barbara Reithmaier.
    a. This award recognizes an acquisition professional for
excellence in areas such as Scheduling, Risk Management, and Program
Reporting. In FY 2023, they made significant improvements and
employed innovative methods to enhance acquisition activities,
objectives, or performance for their Component, program, or office.
    b. Ms. Reithmaier is a contract specialist who provides direct
support to the Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems for the National
Security Cutter Program. She was recognized for her outstanding
coordination of contract requirements and industry engagement,
releasing two requests for information that resulted in the
receipt of 31 industry responses. She also developed a multi-year
strategic plan for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
service contract requirements. Additionally, Ms. Reithmaier assisted
the program with translating updates to operational requirements
and the technical requirements suitable for use in the follow-on
unmanned aircraft system (UAS) contract. In FY 2023, results of her
strategic planning enabled the successful and timely execution of
19 total UAS deployments and avoided the expenditure of $1.5 million
for the Coast Guard. Her direct efforts to get UAS deployed resulted
in the seizure of more than 132,000 pounds of illicit narcotics
valued at more than $1.25 billion.
4. DHS Cost Estimator of the Year - Mr. Jason Westmeyer.
    a. This award recognizes a Cost Estimator or Cost Analyst who
directly supported an acquisition program with excellent cost
estimation and analysis in FY 2023. They contributed to Life Cycle
Cost Estimates, Independent Cost Estimates, and other cost models.
They played a key role in affordability analysis, training, and
process improvement. Their work managed risk and uncertainty,
balancing subjective efforts with a disciplined approach. The
nominee significantly contributed to their Component, program,
or office through their analysis and estimating products.
    b. Mr. Westmeyer is the team lead of the Coast Guard Cost
Estimation and Evaluation branch. He was recognized for his
leadership skills and efforts to maintain continuity of effort
when the branch experienced turnover in personnel. More
specifically, when two team members left to accept positions with
DHS, Mr. Westmeyer reassigned duties to ensure the Coast Guard
Acquisition Directorate's needs were continually met.
While leading through this time of organizational change, Mr.
Westmeyer completed critical documentation on cost, including rough
order of magnitude (ROM) approaches to provide the Coast Guard
with consistency among non-major acquisition programs. This work
established standardization for non-major cost ROMs that can be
used across the Coast Guard enterprise. The standardization will
allow for more active costing engagement efforts and provide the
basis on which to build cost support for agile acquisition efforts
in the future. The new ROM approaches are being implemented to
estimate costs for multiple major programs, including MH-60T,
leading to successful milestone completions.
5. DHS Life Cycle Logistician of the Year - LCDR Nicholas Sapiano.
    a. This award recognizes a top-tier Life Cycle Logistician who
demonstrated exceptional skill in Life Cycle Logistics (LCL)
during FY 2023. Life Cycle Logisticians oversee planning,
development, implementation, and management of effective and
affordable product support strategies for materials and IT
systems throughout their life cycles. They ensure logistics
support meets program goals for operational effectiveness and
readiness, addresses supportability requirements within cost,
schedule, and performance constraints, and influences systems
design for supportability. Successful Logisticians are
proficient in Logistics Design Influence, Integrated Product
Support Planning, Product Support and Sustainment, Configuration
Management, Reliability and Maintainability Analysis,
Technical/Product Data Management, and Supportability
Analysis, while ensuring compliance with Directive 102-01
and Instruction 102-01-001.
    b. LCDR Sapiano is the offshore patrol cutter (OPC) integrated
logistics support (ILS) project manager, working at the
Surface Acquisitions Logistics Center. He was recognized for
developing the largest logistics package ever undertaken by the
Coast Guard. He led a diverse team of military, government
civilians and support contractors and coordinated a much larger
matrix team of stakeholders, logistics element managers,
technical warrant holders and advisers to ensure that the OPC
class will be logistically supported to meet all sustainability
and affordability goals. Additionally, LCDR Sapiano was instrumental
in developing and beta testing the first comprehensive transition
to sustainment criteria for ILS product development quantifying
progress of the ILS deliverables. Additionally, he directed 60
maintenance analyses, entered 1,100 maintenance requirements,
developed 360 maintenance procedure cards, enrolled 900 spare
parts and developed transition to sustainment criteria, ensuring
operational readiness of OPCs upon delivery.
6. DHS Information Technology Professional of the Year -
Ms. Delphine Woltz.
    a. This award recognizes an IT professional who made
significant improvements or innovations in IT-related
activities for their Component, program, or office during FY
2023, employing innovative methods to enhance IT objectives
and performance.
    b. Ms. Woltz is a member of the Coast Guard Electronic Health
Record Acquisition Program. She was honored for going "above and
beyond all expectations" to develop tools enabling the successful
execution of the program. Notably, she developed a tool to track
and manage $500 million in lifecycle budget and procurement actions.
This new tool successfully supported the management and execution
of 70 obligations each year. Ms. Woltz leveraged the application
to ensure alignment and visibility of the obligation plan among
all internal and external stakeholders. During the deployment of
MHS Genesis to Coast Guard clinic and sick bay locations worldwide,
the need arose for a clear understanding of clinic and sick bay
inventory gaps. She volunteered to champion the development of
an inventory tool to track all medical and dental information
technology hardware across 168 ashore and afloat healthcare
facilities. Her creation empowered the Coast Guard's distributed
medical community to implement a nationwide configuration
management program that did not exist before.
7. DHS Requirements Manager of the Year - LCDR Katrian Hernandez.
    a. The DHS Requirements Manager of the Year award honors
individuals who have excelled in managing requirements at the
Department of Homeland Security. It recognizes their skill in
identifying, documenting, and managing requirements to ensure
project success aligned with DHS mission goals. The award
highlights their use of innovative solutions to enhance
requirements management efficiency. It also celebrates their
leadership and collaboration across teams, contributing
significantly to DHS mission goals through effective
requirements management practices and ongoing professional
development in the field.
    b. LCDR Hernandez was recognized for expertly managing more than
20 critical requirements and development projects and prioritized
needs and critical timelines spanning the Coast Guard's aviation,
shore, cyber and specialized deployable forces portfolios. As one
of the integrated product team co-chairs, her efforts were
instrumental in enabling the Coast Guard, U.S. Customs and Border
Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to articulate
the mission need for maintaining maritime domain awareness.
Additionally, she has demonstrated excellence in her breadth of
knowledge in requirements expertise across a diverse set of
organizational capability needs. Her expertise ensured that
the final acquisition products delivered the capabilities
required for field use through sound and reasonable key
performance parameters, measures of performance and measures of
effectiveness.
8. POC: LCDR Vincent Escobedo, Vincent.E.Escobedo@uscg.mil.
9. RADM Chad L. Jacoby, Assistant Commandant for Acquisitions
(CG-9), sends.
10. Internet release is authorized.