14 August 2007

New Zealand‘s Defence Force is a dynamic organisation.

Any day could see Service personnel go to work in a military base in New Zealand or on location anywhere in the world – and that takes a great ‘behind the scenes’ team to ensure the smooth running of the organisation.

This new team is called the Joint Logistics Support Organisation or JLSO for short.

It’s task is to provide a wide range of specialist non-military support in all camps and bases – over all three Services.

For military personnel, this means that the work of the administration and support that is not strictly military, can be left to a civilian force which prides itself on delivering services based on need and excellence.

One part of JLSO is the Customer Support Team. These people are known as “the face at the base”.

“As various services bring JLSO into their structure, people will begin to see changes at their bases and camps,” says Wayne Sivern, Group Manager, JLSO Customer Support.

JLSO workers will deliver services including housing administration, household removals, accounts payable and receivable, procurements and buying functions and civilian administration.

There are service delivery managers already in place in Ohakea, Woodbourne, Linton, Papakura, Whenuapai, Trentham and HQ Joint Force NZ – as well as HQNZDF.

Building a strong commercial focus is the main job of the service delivery managers - this means delivering jobs and services in full and on time.

Accounting services are handled by JLSO now. The Business Processing Group delivers both transactional accounting and accounts payable.

Transactional accounting includes cash management, fixed assets registers, tax payments, credit card registers, insurance, foreign exchange and internal expenditure control.

Accounts payable includes payments and accounts receivable. Increasingly this will be done in a ‘paperless world’ but keeping what’s required, for example, the capability to physically write a cheque.

Another unit is the Property Management group. Team members here look after everything from simple building maintenance through to significant construction projects and land stewardship.

Four business units of property management include environmental services, infrastructure projects, facilities management services and business services.

Another JLSO arm is the Commercial Support team which looks after contracts and procurement. Its responsibilities include:

• Managing relationships with key suppliers e.g. Vanlines, APX, and airlines
• providing tendering and contract support to NZDF and Army (SME)
• maintaining tender and contract templates
• maintaining NZDF’s input to the CRS database of contracts and vendors
• monitoring and recording of contractor performance
• providing training to NZDF on tendering and contract matters
• preparing papers for tenders boards when required
• Codification Bureau - to provide quality codification data to the NZDF.

Army, Air Force and Navy have property management teams on their bases, and JLSO HQ based at Defence HQ oversees the process from a shared perspective.

JLSO acknowledges that it has a monopoly on the Defence Force.

“We are unique in that if we do not perform to Defence’s satisfaction, Defence cannot go elsewhere. But we intend to retain our ‘captive audience’ by performing and having our customers return to us time and time again,” says Mr Sivern.

“The Defence Force’s people are the reason for JLSO’s existence and we want to provide a service that can only be described as excellent.”

JLSO is made up of both civilian and military personnel.

Image Gallery - Issue 379