ALC honored for excellence

Alexander Hamilton Award formerly known as Commandant’s Quality Award

The Aviation Logistics Center in Elizabeth City discovered last month that it has been named one of this year’s winners of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Alexander Hamilton Award for Excellence.

The award, formerly known as the Commandant’s Quality Award, is presented to units that “have implemented innovative management practices which have delivered valuable results,” according to a memo from Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen. The award uses the same criteria as the Malcolm Baldrige Award judged by the National Institute of Standards and Technology out of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The Aviations Logistics Center will receive the award for a support unit and Sector Ohio Valley will receive the award for an operational shore unit.

“Both commands demonstrated enduring processes and performance results which provide lessons for all units,” Allen’s memo states. “I urge you to find out more about how each operates to learn and benefit from their example.”

The ALC is tasked with providing logistics support to the Coast Guard’s entire aviation community of 26 units. The center provides procurement, depot level maintenance, engineering, supply, acquisition and information services.

The award will be presented Nov. 19 at the Coast Guard Innovation Expo in Virginia Beach, Va., according to Cmdr. Chuck Bell, business performance branch chief at the ALC. Bell said the award criteria include overall performance excellence in the areas of leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, measurement analysis and knowledge management, workforce focus, process management and actual results.

Bell said ALC being named as an award recipient confirms for the entire Coast Guard that the unit is constantly improving and “continues to be at the forefront of modernization.”

In a memo to ALC staff, Capt. Edward Gibbons, commanding officer of ALC, encouraged the unit’s approximately 1,500 military, civilian and contract workers to continue to improve on already award-winning work.

“I hope the Hamilton award just stokes the fire in all this because, ironically perhaps, this is the year we really have to take our performance to the next level,” Gibbons told his crew.

Bell said the ALC this year will be dealing with budget constraints, transitioning to work on the CASA airplane, and replicating their Coast Guard business model to sectors and small boat stations.

To apply for the award, ALC submitted an awards package and hosted a team of Coast Guard examiners in June who assessed the center to confirm that it was conducting business as it said it was.

This isn’t the first time the center has been recognized for quality. It has won three Commandant’s Quality Awards since 1994. In 1994 and 2003, it won the silver quality award and in 2004, the ALC won the gold.

“We’re leading the Coast Guard in its modernization efforts, and I guess being better stewards of the taxpayers’ money,” Bell said. “We’re basically training or mentoring the rest of the Coast Guard on ... the Coast Guard’s new business model.”

A division of the center will also be recognized at the Innovation Expo. The Information Systems Division won an innovation award that will also be presented at the expo.

For the Hamilton award, seven other units were nominated. They were the Command and Control Engineering Center, the Communications Area Master Station Atlantic, First Coast Guard District Staff, Maritime Intelligence Fusion Center Atlantic, Cutter Alex Haley, Cutter Melon, and Cutter Waesche. No small units applied and no award in the large afloat operations category was given.