Seaport-E Quality Assurance Program
Approach: Long Wave Headquarters in Oklahoma City develops the company's strategic plans and formulates company policy. Long Wave currently has established a Seaport-e placeholder on our publicly available website at www.longwaveinc.com and will populate and manage it for business within 10 days of contract award. The Long Wave Oklahoma City office also performs all contract administration and financial accounting, employee hiring and security processing, under the supervision of the Chief Financial Officer, Jennifer Johnson. Ms. Johnson has been with Long Wave since 1998 and has been the contract administrator for every contract Long Wave has performed. Ms. Johnson serves as Long Wave's single point of contact to the Government Contracting Officer (CO), Contracting Officer's Representatives (CORs) and ordering officials. In the absence of Ms. Johnson, Mr. Phillip Miller (President, Long Wave) acts in behalf of Ms. Johnson for all matters relating to this contract and Long Wave's administration of this contract.
Long Wave assigns a Program Manager to each major program. The program manager assigned responsibility for the Seaport-e Program will be authorized to represent Long Wave in all non-contractual communications with the government. Additionally he is responsible for Long Wave's performance, cost, and schedule on Seaport-e. Mr. Post has 22 years experience as an engineer and managing various DoD programs. Prior to joining Long Wave, Mr. Post was an Associate Technical Fellow at The Boeing Company with work on B-52, F-22, E-6, KC-135 and V-22 platforms. Other duties of the Seaport-e program manager are to direct the program activities of Long Wave employees and our team members: Hi Q, Tryck Nyman Hayes, Hi-Q Inc. and Intuitive Research and Technology Corporation.
Capability: Long Wave has experience in managing diverse programs such as maintenance support for TACAMO at Tinker AFB; developing a HF receive system for NAVSEA; and developing specialized software applications to automate use of legacy maintenance data for the US Air Force.
Our program with the broadest scope and most challenging tasks has been the Clarinet Merlin Receive System Program. We designed a set of six receive stations scattered strategically across the globe and a pair of operator terminals. The system is interconnected on the SUBOPAUTHWAN Network. Our implementation of the program required managing two major subcontractors during the development of system control software and highly specialized digital signal processing.
The Clarinet Merlin Receive System (CMRS) is also one tangible example of how Long Wave's innovative technical solutions and management practices have provided significant cost savings to the Navy while facilitating the Navy's conversion to performance based contracting. Long Wave used several technological and programmatic approaches that resulted in an estimate that was 33% of the cost of the USN's reported "should cost". Additionally, all equipment and services were delivered on time and within cost for the estimate proposed by Long Wave. The equipment met or exceeded all requirements of the contract. Long Wave can and will implement performance based approaches to solicitations and orders on the Seaport-e contract. Our existing Indian Head contact and its predecessors have been a model for Navy performance based contracts, and our CMRS project was SPAWAR HQ's first and highly successful attempt at Performance Based Contracting.
We are proud to state that the system design is complete, the system tests have been successful, and all work has either been completed on schedule or is anticipated to complete on time. Our customer, SPAWAR is pleased and hasn't received any unpleasant surprises.
Managing Change: Because of Long Wave's business philosophy, managing change, preserving stability, and maintaining technical expertise in the work force has not been an issue. Being a small business, we employ a core staff of talented key people. To augment our staff, Long Wave has made a practice of hiring many individuals who are highly successful professionals and are recently retired from the military, civilian government, and industry. These experts are used as needed for given projects, and are less expensive in terms of overhead than our full-time employees. By drawing on their professional expertise, while minimizing overhead, Long Wave is able to realize cost effectiveness, which we are able to pass on to our customers. We compliment this approach by implementing a mentor/trainee program to groom junior level technicians and program personnel to develop their skills while keeping our rates competitive.
As we provide these "Baby Boomers" with a stable dedicated work force, and time advances through the remainder of the "Baby Boomer" generation's retirement cycle, we anticipate a continuation of our successful hiring practices.
Additionally, as the new Seaport-e programs replace previous support programs, Long Wave desires to interview and hire key individuals who are being displaced as their programs are being terminated.
For other professional placement, Long Wave employs the use of dedicated in-house recruiters from our Oklahoma City and Ft. Worth offices, who specialize in recruiting qualified, professional employees to fill any requirement. Through our extensive network of recruiters, Long Wave is readily equipped to supply quality professionals in a timely manner to task orders for Virtual SYSCOM, institute best practices throughout and realize cost savings. This arrangement allows Long Wave to offer a low overhead rate while providing timely, cost effective and quality professional and administrative support services to the Navy.
Monitoring and Maximizing Quality: It is Long Wave's philosophy that our quality program starts when we write a proposal and finishes when the contract is completed.
By doing a thorough system engineering analysis, creating functional models and allocating requirements to hardware and software, a quality design is initiated. By creating accurate documentation, controlling changes, performing inclusive testing, and empowering employees to demand quality, we work towards maximizing quality.
The Long Wave Quality Assurance Program is built upon an overall methodology that provides to all concerned the necessary evidence needed to establish confidence that the quality function is being performed. This program is implemented on any government contract that requires a QA Program.
Long Wave and/or our teammates will prepare a Quality Assurance plan structured around the scope of each task order. Each plan will be approved by Long Wave management and submitted to the government 90 days after the receipt of the task order.
Guaranteeing Responsiveness and Cooperation: It is Long Wave's policy to be open, honest, and straight forward with our customers. Responsiveness has been a benchmark of our performance with contracting on Navy IDIQ efforts accomplished in days rather than weeks. We guarantee responsiveness and cooperation for personnel and service efforts by addressing these issues in employee annual merit reviews. Our ability to rapidly respond to customer requests for everything from software development to personnel staffing to engineering analysis has made us the "contractor of choice" for our Navy and other customers.
Problem Resolution: Long Wave's approach to problem resolution will be to document and publish an "Issue Log" prior to issues becoming problems. The log will be kept current, on a weekly basis, and will be routed to Long Wave's management weekly as well as to the customer's program management office monthly or more frequently if needed. Working together, Long Wave's program manager and the customer's program office will jointly assign issues to appropriate individuals. Each issue will be assigned a specific resolution date. Issues will be subsequently tracked and cleared. If not clearable work around solutions will be worked out with customer approval.
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