ESC helping to achieve successful transition Published March 9, 2012 By Patty Welsh By 66th Air Base Group Public Affairs HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. -- Detailed planning for Air Force Materiel Command's five-center transition is well under way, with some 50 people from across the Electronic Systems Center working hard to ensure the transition to the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center will be a success. "Lots of planning and hard work has already taken place and it is up to all of us at ESC to move forward to make the restructure a reality and realize success," said Lt. Gen. CR Davis, ESC commander. "We've got very dedicated individuals working hard to support the process." Larry Coe, ESC LCMC lead, who is heading up the combined ESC efforts, said teams are in place to make that happen. "Our goal is to create a seamless transition to the LCMC construct for the vast majority of people within ESC," he said. There are four LCMC transition sub-teams under the core team, each with ESC personnel as co-leads. Paul Commeau is a co-lead for the Program Execution and Reporting Team, which focuses on transitioning acquisition related support activities. Dr. Joe Delaney is co-lead for the Corporate Governance Team focusing on enhancing and developing corporate processes and governance. Sherry Farley is co-lead for the Manpower/Personnel Team focusing on determining and implementing all required manpower/personnel realignment actions. Col. Juan Gaud is co-lead for the Infrastructure/Bed-down Team focusing on support relationships to ensure LCMC organizations have all necessary facilities and base support. There are also teams in all the functional areas, and ESC is providing support to the planning efforts of those teams as well. All teams have been very busy planning for a smooth transition. "We have identified a multitude of discrete tasks associated with the transition," said Delaney. "And now we are in the process of figuring out how to ensure everything is completed without impacting our customer commitments." In addition to these teams, leadership at all levels is committed to making the five-center transition go as smooth as possible. The command has established a weekly battle rhythm to identify and work transition issues as ESC, Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, and Air Armament Center at Eglin AFB, Fla., join forces to form the LCMC. LCMC will be headquartered at Wright-Patterson. As part of their commitment to ensure things go smoothly, several senior functional representatives from ASC traveled to Hanscom in January to meet with their ESC counterparts and discuss transition-related issues and concerns and start establishing a workable path forward. Everyone involved thought the meetings were highly beneficial. In fact, the meetings were considered so successful that subsequently, members from ASC and ESC met with their AAC counterparts at Eglin and just last week met with their air logistics center acquisition sustainment directorate counterparts. The ASDs will report to LCMC. "We have been actively engaging with the ASDs to ensure it will be a smooth transition," said Col. Stacy McNutt, Battle Management deputy director. "And we have also been working with programs that will transition as the Battle Management and TC2 Directorates are merged under a single Program Executive Officer." Due to the inactivation of ESC, the most noticeable change will be that there will no longer be a local center commander and supporting staff. By eliminating command staffs and overhead, AFMC expects to save about $109 million annually while at the same time streamlining and standardizing its mission functions. Some of those functions at ESC will migrate to the 66th Air Base Group. Other ESC staffs functional offices will serve as operating locations for some LCMC staff functions at Wright-Patterson. As to what happens in the future for many of the people now serving in the ESC staff functional offices, "Many of the functional staff personnel will move back into program offices," said Coe. "So, the biggest change most people in the acquisition directorates might see is that instead of picking up the telephone and asking a question to someone on staff here at Hanscom, they'll call and talk to someone on LCMC staff at Wright-Patterson to get an answer."