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ahead
ahead The Art of Buying
among the first Maryland students to earn the specialization in federal acquisition in December 2012. The classes he had to take to earn that specialization taught Patterson different strategies for managing contracts. One was a class devoted to ethics and conflict of interest, “which is extremely important when working with taxpayer dollars,” Patterson says. He’s currently a contract specialist with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration at the Transportation Department, where he researches markets and the regulations that guide the purchase of IT equipment and software, as well as safety equipment such as radiation detectors. The government has rules about where it can buy from, Patterson says. One regulation Patterson works with says that rather than buying specialized goods developed only for government agencies, buyers should purchase commercially available goods (for example, Dell laptops rather than government- or military-specification computers) if the commercial goods meet the agency’s needs. Another regulation says that agencies should use government credit cards to make purchases that cost less than $3,000, rather than using accounts payable offices
TEDDY WOLFF (FOR EXPRESS)
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Patti Pace hopes to become a contracting officer after she graduates next spring.
“There’s no vision of the future that looks like we’re going to have a surplus of money.” — PAT TI PACE, A UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND STUDENT WHO IS SPECIALIZING IN FEDERAL ACQUISITION AS PART OF HER MASTER OF PUBLIC POLICY DEGREE
or other electronic payment methods, in order to pay vendors faster. What drew Patterson to acquisitions? “I like rules — how they can and cannot apply to things —
and just how regulations are interpreted,” he says. “It’s kind of like light legal work.”
A New Generation Of Buyers “There is no question in my mind that there’s a real shortage of acquisition-experienced and -educated people,” Gansler says. He ran a 2007 commission on Army acquisitions that found only about half of the people in charge of buying and spending had proper acquisition training. This shortcoming led to significant waste and fraud, according to the report. “When
MS
Buying things for the federal government with taxpayer dollars isn’t much different from buying stuff for yourself with your own money: You have to decide what you want and how much you can afford to spend, then consider reliability, incentives and maintenance costs, among other factors. What to buy: “The institutional inertia always wants to buy the things they always bought in the past,” Gansler says, so acquisition specialists look at “how do you shift from horse-and-carriage to modern vehicles and 21st-century [technology].” How to buy: Should you have businesses compete for the contract by submitting bids? Or decide which company to use in another way? Whom you buy from: Government or commercial suppliers? American or foreign suppliers? “You have to be concerned when you’re spending taxpayer money: Are you helping the economy and getting what you need to get, and are you getting the best?” Gansler says. Support costs: If you buy a car, you’ll have maintenance costs. For a ship or aircraft, those costs are enormous. At the Defense Department, some $80 billion of Gansler’s $180 billion budget went toward maintenance, support and logistics. “You want to make stuff that’s lowcost and works well but that continues to work long-term,” he says. C.M.
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you’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars,” Gansler says, “it’s clear that experience matters.” In addition to the acquisition specialty in its Master of Public Policy program, the University of Maryland offers a certificate program for those with full-time jobs who have completed the acquisition courses; soon, engineering and business school graduate students will be able to specialize in federal government acquisition, too. Other metro-area universities discuss acquisition in graduate-level public-policy or business-management courses. If you enter the Georgetown Public Policy Institute’s Master of Policy Management-Public Service program (tinyurl.com/lw8lrt6), you’ll learn about acquisition reform in your classes. At the George Washington School of Business, you can learn the federal acquisition process in the government contracts program (business.gwu.edu/msgc). Students building their knowledge of federal acquisition will be the best prepared to face the challenge of getting better goods and services at a lower cost, Gansler says. And that’s a win for taxpayers. In addition, with recent federal budget cuts and sequestration, “offices are now going to have to purchase the same amount of things with less money,” Patterson says. “ T he y ’re goi ng to have to be more creative.” CARRIE MADREN (FOR E XPRESS)
commercial kitchen in their basement. “When I started out, I had like 190 square feet, and by the time they finally kicked me out, I had taken over a little over a thousand,” he says. Ludlow and Hubbard first set up shop at the Old Town Alexandria Farmers Market in 2009 and two years later opened a brick-and-mortar store in Georgetown. Today, they make all of their products in the 8-month-old Alexandria shop, which includes a crib for their 3-month-old daughter, Linden, to hang out while mom and dad work. TEDEDY WOLFF /FOR EXPRESS
Acquisitions
Robert Ludlow started making artisan chocolates in his parents’ basement. His company, Fleurir Chocolates, now has locations in Old Town Alexandria and Georgetown.
Bread for Chocolate A chocolatier makes his dough working with sweet stuff Robert Ludlow, 28 SALARY: $50,000-$60,000 POSITION: Chocolatier/owner, Fleurir Chocolates (fleurirchocolates .com, 202-465-4368)
WHAT HE DOES: Ludlow can make the sun rise, sprinkle it with dew, cover it with choc’late and a miracle or two. He can because he’s a candy man, well, more specifically, a chocolate man. Along with his wife, Ashley Hubbard, 27, and a handful of smiling employees, Ludlow — the self-styled “mad genius” behind Fleurir Chocolates in Georgetown (3235 P St. NW) and Old
Town (724 Jefferson St., Alexandria) — churns out artisan chocolates daily. Individually designed fine chocolates are the heart — er, creamy center — of Fleurir’s business. Ludlow and gang start by making 14-by-14-inch trays of ganache, the gooey center that gives each square its unique flavor. “My favorite is Lavender Shiraz,” Ludlow says. “It’s [local] lavender steeped with cream, and it’s balanced with a South Australian Shiraz.” After the ganache is cut into 1-inch squares, the naked morsels head to an “enrober” machine to ride through a shower of chocolate that hardens into an outer shell. The finishing touch is a graphic
design in cocoa butter on the top of each square. HOW HE GOT THE JOB: While a culinary student at Le Cordon Bleu in Sydney in 2006, Ludlow landed his first candy-making job at a local shop. Back in the States in 2007, Ludlow went full-on choc by joining the staff of Gearhart’s Fine Chocolates in Charlottesville, Va. “They taught me that you can really have fun and not have a very strict environment, but you can still produce amazing things,” he says. He decided he wanted to produce his own amazing things and in 2009 persuaded his parents to let him build a
STEAL THIS JOB
WHO WOULD WANT THIS JOB:
A love of chocolate is not enough. You also need the patience of an artist. “Chocolate’s really fickle. It’s not easy to work with,” Ludlow says. On the plus side, you get to be as creative as you want with it, he says. And, as a shop-owner, you get to meet lots of people, which he enjoys. “We’ve had a number of customers come in and bring us baby presents,” he says. “It’s been phenomenally nice.” HOW YOU CAN GET THIS JOB:
While you don’t need a culinary degree, Ludlow says it helps. “Half of chocolate making is knowing what to do when things go wrong,” he says. To open your own chocolate business, you need substantial start-up dollars for equipment. An enrober can run around $35,000. “A lot of the money [you make in] the first few years goes directly back into the company,” Ludlow says. TRACY KRULIK (FOR EXPRESS)
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