Fort Belvoir, Va. –
DCAA’s North Texas Branch Office performed an audit at the request of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) Contracting Officer and received accolades for their support. The team audited multiple years of costs related to a contract for customer service and support for the Federal Retirement Thrift Savings Program. The audit team overcame several challenges and the end result was positive feedback demonstrating the value of their support.
This audit covered five years of costs and was very complex due to multiple contractor changes and turnover among the contractors’ staff during time period the audit covered, which made it difficult to find individuals with knowledge of the entire five-year time period. Additionally, the audit team itself had no knowledge of either contractor.
To overcome these challenges, the team developed a plan and focused their audit on the needs of the customer. They pulled in additional auditors as well as a Technical Specialist and the Agency Compensation Team creating a team with the knowledge and size to complete this complex audit. Once the audit started, they held bi-weekly meetings with the customer and contractor to clarify questions and keep everyone informed of audit progress.
The team worked together to complete these audits and also provided negotiation support for over three years overcoming COVID impacts, contractor personnel changes, and complicated issues associated with this contract and contractor. The FTRIB Contracting Officer was very appreciative of the real-time support the FAO provided after audit issuance to include updating the Government’s position workbook the FTRIB used for negotiations. The Contracting Officer stated in part, "the Negotiation Workbook was a great collaboration with your team to establish and maintain the Government position baseline throughout negotiations. With the collaboration and support from your team, FRTIB was able to reach a settlement with the contractor to avoid a claim and potential litigation. This was a significant accomplishment for FRTIB and would not have been possible without DCAA."
The DCAA Team Members are:
- Tony Munoz, Branch Manager
- Tonya Steel, Supervisory Auditor
- Ginny Koubek, Supervisory Auditor
- LaWanda Cox, FAO Assistant for Quality
- Todera Woods-Cotton, Senior Auditor
- Adeboye (David) Adebesin, Senior Auditor
- Aliya Gibson, Senior Auditor
- Amanda Rawlins-Martin, Senior Auditor
- Laura Quesada-Herrera, Senior Auditor