CLEVELAND - Carney-McNicholas, Inc. is helping the federal government move hundreds of jobs to downtown Cleveland. Since 2006 the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the accounting firm of the Department Of Defense with the mission to improve the overall effectiveness of DOD's financial management through consolidation, standardization and integration of finance and accounting procedures, has added 800 jobs to the Anthony J. Celebrezze Federal Office Building in Cleveland, the nondescript stainless steel and glass 32-story office building at East 9th Street and Lakeside Avenue.

Cleveland's recent federal government job gain comes at the expense of DFAS centers closing elsewhere, including San Diego and Oakland, Calif., Kansas City, Mo., Norfolk, Va and most recently Pensacola, FL. Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) cuts have DFAS being completely restructured as many sites are being integrated into a few major centers including Cleveland. Carney-McNicholas commercial move supervisors direct moving crews procured from local United Van Lines and Mayflower Transit agents in these markets to load trailers of file cabinets and systems furniture. CM local commercial crews deliver, reassemble and reconfigure the furniture and fixtures over 15 floors of 31,000 square feet each of the Federal Building.

This past April through the beginning of May, Carney commercial move supervisors Dennis Cleland and Brett Dibell worked with Jay Malakaua of Suddath Relocation systems of Pensacola to disassemble, relocate and reassemble 20 trailer loads of Herman Miller systems furniture from DFAS offices in Pensacola to Cleveland. Jay Jackson, Director of Marketing for Carney-McNicholas Special Services business unit managed the logistics of the operation including the coordination of the line haul transportation equipment provided by the van lines.

"Most everybody else is cutting," DFAS Deputy Director Chet Boutelle said this week. "We are growing." Boutelle said he was surprised and gratified at the number of mid-career employees DFAS has hired from the hard-hit manufacturing and financial-services sectors of the northeast Ohio economy. The DFAS job boom means more activity in a downtown sector already absorbing new investment.

In 1991Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney created the Defense Finance and Accounting Service to reduce the cost of Defense Department finance and accounting operations and to strengthen financial management through consolidation of finance and accounting activities across the department. DFAS is a working capital fund agency financed by reimbursement of operating costs from its governmental customers (mostly the military service departments) rather than through direct appropriations. This service-provider relationship with its customers has resulted in a continuous innovation and improvement in the quality of services DFAS provides. DFAS has steadily reduced its operating costs and has returned these savings to customers in the form of decreased costs. In 2003 DFAS was selected by the Office of Personnel Management to be one of four governmental entities to provide payroll services for the U.S. government.

The Anthony J. Celebrezze Federal Building, known as the Federal Building, is a skyscraper located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Designed by Cleveland architecture firms Outcault, Guenther, Rode & Bonebrake, Schafer, Flynn & Van Dijk, and Dalton, Dalton, Little, and Newport, the building has 32 stories and rises to a height of 419 ft. The building has 1,007,000 square feet of office space, and is located at 1240 East 9th Street.

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