Quality Decisions from Quantitative Data

VISTA helps every client make the highest quality decisions from masses of quantitative data. Consider the accomplishments of Mike Ryan, VISTA’s Program Manager for the US Army’s Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management (OACSIM).

Mike Ryan came to VISTA after retiring from the Army Corps of Engineers. Supervising a team of four analysts and computer experts, Mike has spent 17 years working with the Army’s real property inventory data, supporting OACSIM.

In this interview, Mr. Ryan explains how VISTA benefits the Army, and the range of tasks the company performs for its long-time client. He also explains why VISTA has been so successful for so long – and why success and longevity go hand-in-hand.

What Is VISTA’s Value to the Army?

Without VISTA, the Army’s business would still go on. The service would still have money, units would be allocated, programs would continue. People would still make decisions, regardless of whether they had access to quantitative data or not.

What’s important about VISTA is that we help provide information to defend the Army’s real property funding requests – a very large part of its overall operations. We help ensure that the Army’s budgets are always appropriately scaled to its needs.

By the Army’s own reckoning, VISTA has saved over $1 billion in unnecessary military construction costs since the very first round of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC). VISTA’s value, however, transcends mere dollar savings. We assess and explain the risks attached to any particular plan of action related to facility operations or stationing.

The choice ultimately is theirs, of course – but through our efforts, the Army is a more responsible steward of taxpayer dollars and the appropriations set aside for its programs.

What Does VISTA Do?

VISTA helps the Army in two key ways: We calculate the amount of money that ought to be allocated to specific installations for facilities and base operations support. We also track the money that is in fact allocated to such support – and we work to understand and explain why those two numbers are sometimes different.

Our work falls under the requirements development process, based on models developed by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) through the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics (AT&L). These models apply a cost factor per square foot to sustain a specific category of facility. Multiplying that cost factor by the total square footage for category of facility across all branches of service equals a requirement cost to keep up that type of facility.

Requirement costs are important in stationing analysis. They help the Army assess the true expense of proposed actions, such as moving units to various possible locations because of base closure or mission realignments.

VISTA uses predictive models to understand the facilities needs of the moving unit, and how those needs may mesh with existing assets or facilities at an installation. Some installations may have insufficient facilities to take on additional units, so overbuilding may have to be considered in cost analysis. Some installations may have excesses, so construction costs might be contained with newly-stationed units occupying the excess facilities.

This work is especially useful for comparative analysis at a planning level, and is a good benchmark for the cost of taking a particular course of action.

Why Is VISTA So Successful?

VISTA’s value lies in its strong analytical capabilities, domain expertise and tenure with the client.

Our work demands deep knowledge of the architecture of data sets – that is, the fields and information necessary to get to the required data. With 17 years of experience, the location of specific data is almost instantaneous in my mind; I work regularly with other VISTA analysts to help them think about the data in similar ways.

Clients don’t have to write a query or go into a system for specific information. We either have direct access to the data or we have the latest copies of current data, readily available and packaged with analysis tools.

Often in as little as five minutes we can create a full data set, reconfiguring pivot tables to display data that helps answer a planning question – that time savings alone can be extremely useful for analysts.

We don’t just sit around waiting for people to ask us questions, either. VISTA also regularly creates and packages individual graphics-based reports whenever the Army refreshes data.

These reports offer a quick picture of an installation’s status – how much they have, how much they need, the condition of each of its facilities. Whenever someone wants to run a scenario with a particular facility, they have ready access to important baseline information that simplifies the work.

Domain expertise, technical experience, and longevity: That’s how VISTA helps make quality decisions from quantitative data, and why our clients stay with us, year after year.