Air Force Begins Consolidating Contracting Shops The Air Force has opened the first of five regional acquisition centers that will handle most contracting for domestic bases. The regional center at Randolph Air Force Base, TX, will take over procurement for bases in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Air Force officials told Set-Aside Alert that four others will be established over the next four years at or near Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, Robins in Georgia, Scott in Illinois and Peterson in Colorado. (SAA, 10/12) They will be responsible for operational contracting, which covers all commodities and services used by the bases. The spending totals about $15 billion a year. Air Force officials said they hope to save up to $1 billion annually by consolidating contracts for base support functions as part of a strategic sourcing initiative. In Frequently Asked Questions about the initiative, the Air Force said, “Our experience with strategic sourcing to date reveals that we are often able to target segments of our spending to small business that were previously being awarded to large businesses simply because we did not have the strategic planning in place.” “The [contracting] squadrons at the installations will be significantly downsized,” Charlie E. Williams Jr., deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for contracting, said in a statement. “A lot of the heavy lifting will be done at the regional center. “For those contracting units that remain, their job will be to provide business advisory support for that installation and help them develop requirements and get those requirements into that system,” Williams added.