Message from the Director

Greetings, NOAA Corps colleagues,

As you may have seen earlier this week, the FY2024 Officer Corps Management Plan (OCMP) has been approved by RADM Hann. Notably, OCMD has received numerous calls from officers wanting to know more about this document and how it may impact them. Therefore, I’ve asked our illustrious Workforce Planner, Michael McCarthy, to take the pen this week and share some insight on the OCMP. I hope you enjoy it!

Best Regards,

Captain Chris van Westendorp, NOAA
Director, Commissioned Personnel Center

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One popular question coming up is, “How are Officer Corps Management Plan (OCMP) zone sizes estimated?” Factors that impact zone size calculations for promotion have some unknowns such as appropriations (how many officers can we afford), attrition, officers approved for promotion, interservice transfers, direct appointments, and grade percentage distribution.

With the intent to grow the NOAA Corps, officer promotions are a means to meet experience expectations, workload demands, and right sizing of officers by grade. We can adjust the grade percentage distribution annually to control the growth within grades to meet mission demands. And, with promotions having a top-down flow, each higher-grade promotion can generate a promotion for each lower grade. If one commander is promoted captain, a lieutenant commander may get promoted to meet the commander loss, and so on.

NOAA Corps officer needs are based upon the average annual strength (AAS) and grade percentage distribution. We can estimate potential losses through average attrition by grade and multiplying that number to cover a one-and-a-half-year period, with the intent for officers to pin on their new rank to fill grade gaps from attrition or promotion on-time. Example: A captain grade percentage distribution of 8% with AAS of 337 comes out to about 27 captains. If we have an average attrition of 5 captains per year, a year and a half estimate would result in potential future gaps of; (5 x 1.5 = 7.5) rounded up to 8. If we already have 2 commanders approved for promotion to captain we would subtract the 2 leaving a need for 6 potential promotions.

Taking the captain calculation plus the trickle-down effect, 6 commanders are added to the average commander attrition rate over a year and a half. With commander annual attrition rate of 7 we would use the product (7 x 1.5 = 10.5) rounded up to 11, and add in the 6 potential commander promotions to captain losses for an estimated selection of 17. Lastly, we would then subtract the number of lieutenant commanders already approved for promotion, say 4, to give us an estimated number to promotion selections of 13. This continues through the remainder of the grades with the added contribution of reserving space for pending interservice transfer (IST) and direct appointment (DA) officers to join the NOAA Corps.

With an estimated number of officers to select we'll review the lineal list to determine the zone sizes, including factors of time in grade, time in service specifically for an IST and DA (must have one year with NOAA Corps for promotion consideration), and cohorts. While seemingly subjective, considerations must be given to help prevent unnecessarily large zone sizes and officers potentially being passed over early for promotion.

As you can see, there are changing factors impacting promotion zones each year. The NOAA Corps Director helps set the parameters of the OCMP, and you’ll see that the FY2024 OCMP discussion section addresses some of the factors impacting zone sizes. At the moment, the FY2025 OCMP is not expected to be as robust, but as always, we shall see. For those officers who are curious about when they might be in a promotion zone, I encourage them to take a look at the lineal list, paying attention to prior and current OCMPs, as well as the factors mentioned above, and they may get a sense of where and when they may be up for promotion consideration.

Be Well,
Michael McCarthy