Name: Richard Porterfield, CPCM, PDCM

Title: Subcontracts Manager

Company: Tetra Tech EM Inc. (Aiken, S.C.), an environmental consulting firm which does about 75% of its business with the government (primarily Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and Environmental Protection Agency) and 25% of its business with commercial firms

Reports to: Bette Ross, office manager.

Educational background: BA in Interdisciplinary Studies, University of South Carolina (Columbia), 1987; MS in Personnel Management, Golden State University (San Francisco), 1989.

Work experience: Lead contract administrator for the U.S. Air Force from 1983-1989; senior procurement administrator for Westinghouse Savannah River Co. (Aiken, S.C.) from 1989-1990; lead subcontract administrator for Rust International (Bay St. Louis, Miss.) from 1990- 1992; Southern district contracts manager for Westinghouse Remediation Services (Atlanta) from 1992-1994. Moved into current position in 1994.

Current responsibilities: Manages $200 million in DOE and EPA cost type prime contracts; active in marketing and proposal management efforts including proposal preparation, pricing and negotiation; responsible for the bidding/negotiation award and administration of multi-million dollar fixed price and cost type subcontracts. Responsible for purchasing professional, construction, drilling, laboratory analytical and other services.

Keys to success in the procurement profession: According to Porterfield, there are two critical keys to success in procurement. The first is interpersonal skills. "Teddy Roosevelt once said that the most important ingredient in success was the ability to get along with people," he says. "John D. Rockefeller affirmed this when he said he would pay more for someone with the ability to work well with people than for any technical skill." Porterfield's belief in these age-old dictums was supported when he read the results of a recent study conducted by the Stanford Research Institute. "The study said that 87.5% of the money a person earns in life is based on the ability to work with people, and the remaining 12.5% is the based on technical skills," he says.

"Most interpersonal skills can be learned, although they may come easier for some people than for others," he continues. The best way to learn them? "Adopt a mindset of, 'I am going to do what I can to serve this person,' rather than, 'I am going to get what I can from this person,'" he replies.

The other critical key to success in procurement is the ability to communicate well verbally and in writing. "These skills are especially important when it comes to contract management," he emphasizes. "While it is important to have technical information and technical skills when negotiating contracts, writing and verbal skills are even more important, because you have to be able to achieve a 'meeting of the minds' that ultimately creates the appropriate mutual agreements and obligations." Porterfield has found through almost two decades in contract management that, when a contract fails, it is usually the result of a failure of the parties involved to achieve a successful meeting of the minds.

When communication is successful and contracts do work well, everyone wins. "While with a previous employer, we won a $7 million site cleanup contract from a state DOT," he recalls. "After we got the contract, we approached them with a value engineering change proposal that recommended using a new technology. If the agency agreed to the change, the technology would have allowed us to do the work for about half the original price." Since it was a new technology, though, Porterfield and his colleagues had to make their case to the state agency. "We had to convince them it was an acceptable alternative and would achieve the same results." The presentation was successful, and the technology ended up saving $4 million. "The state got $2 million back, and we got the other $2 million as additional profit," says Porterfield.