Business Office does more than business
Story by J. Kinchen-Schneider

Are you looking for someone to research new business development opportunities? How about new capability development? Even better yet, how about someone to take care of all the logistics associated with standing up the capabilities of new production work? Here at Naval Air Depot North Island, the employees in the Business Office do all of that and more, according to Walt Palmer, director, code 6.F.

The Business Office is the central operations focus of the command and is responsible to represent the present and future business interest of the Naval Air Depot. Its employees work in conjunction with the aircraft and components program managers and other functional entities on integrated maintenance management and integrated logistics support management, as stated in the Naval Air Depot Instruction Manual 5451.1D.

“We have the capability to do more than 13,000 different component line items. Eighty percent of our work comes from about 20 percent of those component line items,” Palmer said. “The rest is low-volume workload that is seen only once or twice a year.”

Because low-volume components are seen infrequently, Palmer and his team have modified their program to do what they call sustaining logistics. This means there are logisticians who work directly in the shops with the artisans, foremen, etc. The logisticians are the ones who take care of the hard to find support elements when one of the infrequent parts arrives. This process is different from what their NADEP teammates in Code 3.0 do.

“They do fleet logistics. We do depot logistics, “ he said. “Fleet logistics are the operators, the sailors that are flying the airplanes. They are using the parts and they [fleet logistics employees] make sure the sailors have constant parts, training and all the logistics elements they need. We do the same thing for the depot here.”

Sustaining logistics, although an important function of the Business Office, it is only a portion of what goes on. Negotiating partnerships with other local businesses, such as Boeing, is another aspect of the NADEP Business Office.

“We did the first partnership with Boeing,” said Linda Garcia, deputy director of the Business Office, Code 6.F. “We were involved with the negotiations of that partnership from the beginning.”
The partnership Garcia referred to is the one for the Navy F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet components.
“We will be doing all the work for Boeing,” Palmer said. “We’ll be a subcontractor. Boeing will be negotiating with us [the NADEP] concerning the workload and providing the money. We will take care of everything for the Super Hornets.”

Other responsibilities of the Business Office include the cost activity studies and the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. Palmer and his team are the coordinating office for the studies. They also do the inter-service agreements for the FMS.

“We support the FMS for several foreign countries who fly planes such as the F/A-18 and E-2,” he said. “We help them with their depots. We support Spain, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, Finland, and Singapore.

Additionally, the Business Office has a logistician who works with the other armed services here – Air Force, Army and Coast Guard. He negotiates the agreements, Palmer said.

“We do the same type of work we do here. For example, say we work on a particular type of radio here and the Army uses that radio, we would do their work for them rather than them stand up (start) the capability to do the same work,” he explained. “They also do work for the Navy.”

“Sometimes we will help them if they are over capacity,” Garcia added. “We will do their fall-out work.”

It is fairly obvious that NADEP’s Business Office is a multi-faceted entity within an ever-changing organization. From the establishment of new capability workload to the planning, managing and coordinating of logistical support for new or modified systems, the Business Office’s roles are many and varied. Developing plans to acquire, receive, store, transfer, issue, maintain and dispose of equipment, as well as analyzing logistical data to ensure milestones are met and deficiencies are identified, are crucial tasks that make the Business Office a much appreciated asset to the operation of the NADEP.