Cherrelle Charles

Cherrelle T. Charles serves as a key procurement professional within the U.S. Coast Guard’s Base New Orleans (70Z029), supporting the agency’s mission to sustain and modernize critical shore-based infrastructure essential to maritime safety and environmental stewardship. Responsible for managing facility-related acquisitions, Charles oversees contracts for building systems, utilities, and physical infrastructure upgrades, ensuring compliance with federal standards and resilience against coastal hazards. Their work directly enables operational readiness by securing essential services and equipment that maintain the functionality and longevity of Coast Guard facilities across the Gulf region. While specific contractor names are not available, Charles maintains a procurement environment that prioritizes small business engagement, consistently directing opportunities to small, disadvantaged, and socioeconomically disadvantaged vendors. Their contracting patterns reflect a strong preference for small business set-asides under FAR 19.5, with over 82% of awards structured to maximize participation from small businesses, including 8(a), HUBZone, and SDVOSB firms. This reflects a deliberate strategy to foster local economic development while ensuring access to agile, specialized service providers. Charles’s procurement focus centers on NAICS categories tied to facility support and maintenance, including 811310 for commercial machinery repair, 337214 for office furniture manufacturing, and 488390 for water transportation support activities. These reflect a technical domain expertise in facility operations, infrastructure maintenance, and ancillary services critical to Coast Guard base functionality. Procurements typically involve industrial equipment, facility upgrades, and support services that align with the Base’s long-term asset management and resilience goals, demonstrating a nuanced understanding of federal facility lifecycle requirements.