RELO Roundtable…a gathering place

A little over three years ago the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC) launched the Department of Defense's (DOD) newly reengineered household goods moving program — the Defense Personal Property Program, or DP3. It's the latest iteration that began in 1995 to make the DOD relocation process more efficient.

SDDC is the executive agent for the United States Transportation Command's (TRANSCOM) expensive new automated move-management software program, the Defense Personal Property System, DPS.

Nine U.S. military commands now rely on DP3 for managing the expenditures of nearly $2.2 billion to arrange the permanent change of station (PCS) duty transfer schedules for over 600,000 military and government service members and their families worldwide each year.

Recently SDDC's Public Affairs office released a sort of DP3 peak season “report card” at www.Army.mil, the official homepage of the United States Army.

The article, DOD's reengineered personal property program streamlines PCS process, eases anxieties, “reveals the best performance to date — streamlining the process and easing the anxiety for service members moving according to SDDC's Personal Property Quality Assurance Division.”

Honest assessment … or wishful thinking?

Based on feedback from the full service moving industry, the military's internal assessment doesn't match the grade that many of the unrecognized small businesses and independent owner-operators involved in providing the material, transportation products, and storage services to their military customers worldwide would give SDDC's low cost 'best value” DP3 program.

The article notes that the peak moving season “normally runs May through August each year with the peak of the peak between Memorial Day and July 4.”

What it fails to mention, however, is that many of SDDC's approved transportation service providers (a/k/a TSPs) started closing their doors to new business in April because of recurring service problems that arose from the ongoing driver and equipment capacity shortages of the last two years.

This forced many military families to perform their own PCS move themselves using unregulated, unmonitored and often unreliable do-it-yourself (DIY) moving, storage, and labor services under DOD's Personally Procured Move (PPM) program.

Since these self-managed DIY moving products and services fall outside the purview of DPS, the customer satisfaction 'feedback' and overrun costs are not measured – nor even acknowledged – in any part of DP3.

After all, you can't measure what you don't see.

Shades of Grey

In August, 2012, the Inspector General for the United States Department of Defense released a highly critical 45-page report which cast similar doubt on the questionable data used to justify the need to continue the Defense Transportation Coordination Initiative (DTCI).

The DTCI award was part of DOD's ongoing attempt to reduce it overall freight transportation costs worldwide and to “improve the reliability, predictability, and efficiency of Department of Defense (DOD) material moving within the Continental United States by all modes through long-term partnerships with a world-class coordinator of transportation management services.”

Under DTCI, DOD awarded a third-party logistics contract valued at $1.76 billion to Menlo Logistics in August 2007 for “3 base years, 2 option years, and 2 award-term option years”.

Based on it's findings that “Menlo reported unverified cost reductions of $167.4 million for 699,157 freight shipments from March 2008 through September 2010” but “TPMO personnel could not show that the DTCI program achieved the DTCI goal of reducing costs on DTCI freight shipments”, the IG recommended that “the Commander, U.S. Transportation Command, not exercise future options on the DTCI contract until he can certify that there are cost reductions. In addition, he should revise oversight guidance.”

Perhaps the Inspector General's office needs to focus their attention on analyzing the DP3 results being reported by SDDC next.

Did SDDC's “new and improved” 2012 DP3 peak season program:

• Improve operational effectiveness?
• Support strong small business participation?
• Improve customer confidence?
• Reduce cycle times (defined as time from request for movement to delivery)?
• Increase efficiencies?
• Develop a partnership to integrate commercial best practices?
• Enable process improvements?
• Achieve cost savings?

Don't be shy!  Participate in the poll and then share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Related Articles:

‘Defense Personal Property Procurement Program (DP3)’ Category – Archived RELO Roundtable Articles

Questionable Data Cast Doubt on the Need for Continuing the Defense Transportation Coordination Initiative – Department of Defense Inspector General (DODIG)

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