To develop and maintain a highly professional, well-trained acquisition workforce, USDA requires procurement personnel to meet a variety of Federal and USDA established education, experience and training criteria.

Information about these requirements and training opportunities is available at this site. Contact Crandall Watson, Acquisition Career Manager, for additional information at Crandall.watson@da.usda.gov .

OMB Policy Letter 05-01 (April 15, 2005)
Subject: Developing and Managing the Acquisition Workforce

The Federal Acquisition Certification in Contracting Program (NEW)

Publications

• Federal Acquisition Institute (FAI) Guiding Policies and Publications
• Seven Steps to Performance Based Service Acquisitions
• Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Qualification Standards for General Schedule Positions

Training Opportunities

• Mentoring Opportunites
  • Acquisition Workforce Mentoring Opportunities (pdf)
  • Mentoring PowerPoint
  • Negotiation
  • Performance Management
• Defense Acquisition University (DAU)
• Course Catalog and Schedules
• Acquisition Center of Excellence (ACE) for Services
• Acquisition Community Connection (ACC)
• FAM & TS (Online price evaluation training suitable for GS-1105s, CORs, and AW maintenance)
• Course Equivalencies (Excel)
• American Graduate University (Distance and On-Site Training) (www.agu.edu)
• Atlantic Management Center, Inc. (CON 301 Course)(www.amciweb.com)
• Business Management Research Associates (www.bmra.com)
• ESI International (www.esi-intl.com)
• Federal Acquisition Institute (www.fai.gov)
• GSA Federal Supply Schedule Training
• George Washington University (www.gwu.edu)
• Management Concept Inc. (www.mgmtconcepts.com)
• NCMA Contract Management Learning Center (www.ncmahq.org)
  • FAC-C Partnership between FAI and NCMA
    (PDF, 86KB)
• Northwest Procurement Institute (www.npi-training.com)
• SAVE International (Value Engineering) (www.value-eng.org)
• Treasury Acquisition Institute
• USDA Graduate School (grad.usda.gov)
  • USDA Graduate School -
    Acquisition Course Guide
• University of MD University College (www.umuc.edu)
• University of Phoenix (www.phoenix.edu)
• University of VA (uvaceonline.org)
• Villanova University (villanovau.com)

Professional Contract Organizations

• National Contract Management Association (www.ncmahq.org)
• Institute for Supply Management (www.napm.org)