AFCEC BRAC Environmental Liabilities Program announces audit readiness

  • Published
  • By Rachel Zaney
  • AFCEC Public Affairs
JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas --  The Air Force Civil Engineer Center's Base Realignment and Closure program is postured to be the first Air Force environmental liabilities program to certify as audit ready; three years ahead of the Secretary of Defense-mandated deadline.

The milestone comes as a response to the former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta memo directing all branches of the armed service to verify processes, update systems and correct flaws to prevent unnecessary spending and more efficient business practices.

For the BRAC program, part of AFCEC's Installations Directorate, this means confirming internal processes are in place and information systems are properly tracking information for more than 5,200 sites for which the division has an obligation to perform cleanup actions.

BRAC conducted this process in accordance with the Department of Defense's financial improvement and audit readiness methodology. In all, it requires completion of discovery, corrective action and assertion and evaluation phases to ensure the liability reported on Air Force financial statements, currently totaling nearly 1.3 billion dollars, is complete and accurate.

A team of process, financial and information technology experts, led by BRAC Program Manager Michael Ferguson, have combed through every aspect of the environmental liabilities requirements to ensure BRAC is reporting accurate numbers on financial statements and data calls, and programming necessary funds during its annual program requirements development cycle to complete cleanup.

Ferguson attributes accountability as the primary driver for completing this milestone early.

"Our program manages millions of dollars each year, and it is our responsibility to ensure we are properly accounting for the past, present and future spending," said Ferguson. "By certifying that our program is audit ready three years in advance, that's three years we can ensure we are as streamlined as we can be while simultaneously performing the necessary cleanup actions to achieve our mission of property cleanup and disposal."

In all, the team documented all processes from site creation to financial reporting, completed four rounds of process evaluations (testing), executed 15 corrective action plans based on testing results and examined more than 400 process controls within BRAC's official record-keeping system. In addition, team members regularly met with the environmental restoration team in AFCEC's Environmental Directorate who responsible for active-duty cleanup, to ensure a consistent approach towards audit readiness.

Together BRAC and environmental restoration are responsible for all environmental cleanup liabilities across the Air Force. Centralized in AFCEC, these divisions frequently discuss best practices, lessons learned and other strategic mission area focuses to ensure the Air Force is utilizing its resources effectively.

"At the end of the day, we are all one Air Force," said Ferguson. "The BRAC program is committed to allocating our resources with integrity, and anything we can do to strengthen the Air Force's audit readiness is another step in the right direction."