News United States Air Force
 AFIMSC fiscal closeout promotes readiness, supports Airmen and familiesPublished Oct. 3, 2019
                        
                        By Ed Shannon
                        
                        
                        Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center Public Affairs
                **JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas (AFNS) --**
                Funding runway lights at Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas; replacing cooling towers at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio; renovating the iconic Air Force Academy chapel; and natural disaster recovery at Air Force installations around the globe.
No fiscal year better illustrates the innovation and flexibility behind the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center’s centralized management of the Air Force’s Installation and Mission Support portfolio than fiscal year 2019.
The Air Force successfully closed out the 2019 fiscal year Sept. 30 by executing a record $7.1 billion in the I&MS portfolio. Lt. Col. Laurie Lanpher, AFIMSC budget director, said the milestone could not be accomplished without a tremendous team effort.
“While AFIMSC oversees the funding, the installations, detachments and primary subordinate units, including the Air Force Installation Contracting Center, contribute significantly to the execution process,” said Chris Underwood, AFIMSC budget office technical director for financial analysis.
With a fully funded budget passed by Congress entering the fiscal year, the Air Force experienced a variety of additional funding challenges that included recovery efforts for a hurricane at Tyndall AFB, Florida, typhoons in Japan, flooding at Offutt AFB, Oklahoma, and an earthquake at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, among others.
“Every fiscal year, you build an execution plan,” Underwood said. “This year, we had to adjust the plan on the fly with all of the unexpected funding requirements ranging from natural disasters to funding for the southern border.”
Organizational adjustments within AFIMSC over the past year opened opportunities for the resources directorate and enterprise managers to provide a deeper level of analysis into I&MS portfolios, Underwood said.
“This improved capability ensures we fund the right requirements at the right time and at the right level and helps us garner additional funds to support unfunded requirements,” he said.
The establishment of a war room to facilitate and expedite end-of-year transactions proved crucial to the successful closeout. Comprised of 30 budget analysts from AFIMSC headquarters and its detachments, war-room team members monitored the status of execution at their respective installations and provided daily briefings.
“We communicated well within the team and provided installations a consistent message so that collectively we could execute funding when it became available,” said Maj. Ryan Anderson, war-room lead and chief of AFIMSC resource management analysis and operations.
Lanpher called closeout operations the “fun part of the fiscal year.”
“Being able to manage the money as it drops out, placing it on the next highest priority and taking care of the most pressing needs of installations make this particular job interesting and satisfying,” she said. “The funds we manage directly impact mission readiness and it takes care of our Airmen and their families where they live and work resulting in a big win for the Air Force.”
Centralized I&MS funding from Air Force through AFIMSC to installations began in 2015 when AFIMSC activated. Before that, each major command received funding from the Air Force for distribution to its installations.LR 



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