SeaPort Enhanced (SeaPort-e) Contract number:  N00178-05-D-4302   SeaPort Team Member E. L. Hamm & Associates, Inc.   POC: William F. Dalton, Vice-President Tele:  (757) 497-5000   Email: elhamm@verizon.net    Website: www.elhamm.com

Quality Assurance Program

In many businesses, the transaction is king. Signing the contract and getting paid the money are the really big events. For such firms, what happens between and after them gets relatively less attention. Not so for E.L. Hamm. For example, when E.L. Hamm started in 1981 the firm began with a small project for an agency within the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The firm employed less than 10 people. Over 20 years later, the firm has grown into a major company and performs diverse projects for many Federal agencies, and yet that agency (the Corps of Engineers) has remained a customer throughout all those years. Eight major contracts and hundreds of task orders have been awarded to the firm by that client over the years. How did our firm do it? We did excellent work, yes; but more importantly, we always did our best to understand the client’s needs and meet them — whatever it took. We did this because if we didn’t get the next contract, we were out of business. Time after time, we did get the next contract; and as our clients’ fortunes improved, in part because of our efforts, so did ours.

            It became apparent, after a few years, that our relationships with clients were far more important than any single contract with them, however large. That is no less true today, when our firm has dozens of projects and many client relationships spanning a dozen years — and no less true for the smallest or newest client, for who knows what the future will bring. The importance to us of “relationship” accounts for our “client focus” in everything that we do.

            It is not a great leap from the orientation expressed above for us to define quality in terms of client satisfaction. That is exactly what we do — we define quality as satisfying the client’s requirements completely. The more satisfaction, the more quality. We do this for a variety of reasons. We believe that:

·         The client is paying the bill and is, therefore, entitled to get what is needed and expected.

·         If the client is not happy with our services, we will probably not have the opportunity to serve that client in the future.

            We are all professionals and, as such, we bring high standards of craftsmanship to our work. Our professional training has schooled us in powerful methodologies, the application of which leads to effective products; and we always want to use these methodologies for the client’s benefit. We are part of an increasingly technology-based profession and always want to use the latest and best technologies. And, like all adults, we have tastes and preferences. We are keenly aware that, after all, our name goes on the product, too. We know, nonetheless, that it is our clients’ satisfaction with what we do, not ours, which must be maximized.

            Maximizing quality, it follows, absolutely requires that we work early, continuously, and diligently to understand as much as possible about the client’s needs and objectives (and even tastes) and the situations in which what we are developing must function. It requires that we give appropriate attention to all political, legal, contractual, and programmatic elements of the efforts we undertake — knowing that these are important client responsibilities (sometimes more critical than the technical ones) which cannot be discharged if we don’t do our part. It requires that we help the client understand and anticipate pitfalls and the orientation of others who will judge what we do and whose judgments will reflect on the client’s perceived effectiveness.

            Open communication between our firm and our customer regarding quality will be an integral part of our Quality Assurance Plan. Throughout the contract, our Project Managers and task leaders will routinely meet with our clients to discuss the Quality Assurance Plan outputs. E.L. Hamm will provide reports containing the quantitative results of product quality monitoring which will be used as the basis for discussion at meetings and to provide the Government with formal documentation of corrective actions being taken to avert potential product and service quality issues detected through the product quality monitoring process.

            Through our comprehensive Quality Assurance Plan, with its direct ties to contract requirements, the applicable regulatory requirements, technical guidance, and specific task order requirements, we identify and mitigate problems at the earliest stage of product development and take effective actions to ensure that the products and services we deliver are at or above the standards required.