The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Galveston District (SWG), hosted PROSPECT (Proponent-Sponsored Engineer Corps Training) Course 183, Formal Source Selection, at the Jadwin Building in Galveston, Texas, Feb. 13-16, 2024.
Source selection is the federal government’s process for selecting contractors to perform work or provide a supply or to construct a building.
Dr. Christopher Barnett, USACE, Engineer Research & Development Center (ERDC), Business Operations Branch (BOB) chief, Vicksburg, Miss., led the team of five instructors.
The course is open to all USACE Project Delivery Team members, as well as interested Dept. of Defense (DoD) employees.
Thirty students came from around USACE and other DoD units. Nine USACE Districts, as well as the Naval Weapons Station, Yorktown, Va., and the U.S. Army Reserve Command G3/5/7, at Fort Liberty, N.C., sent team members to the 30-hour course.
“The intent is to give some foundational knowledge as it relates to Formal Source Selection,” Barnett said. “In this class, we don’t just have contracting personnel; we have project managers, program managers, people from the engineering section. In previous classes, we’ve had small business personnel, office of counsel – so it’s pretty much everyone who’s involved in a source selection process are here to gain foundational knowledge regarding formal source selection.”
Source selection is the process to award contracts, Barnett continued, and the course covers federal acquisition regulations and guidance.
“Within there, there are thresholds that require that we do a formal source selection,” Barnett said. “Then there are times when we can do an informal source selection but there are regulatory items and thresholds that we must follow as part of our Army and USACE regulations.”
There are seven learning objectives; from requirements to solicitation, Barnett explained.
“We go through the process of actually receiving those proposals and we go through a series of events that lead all the way until we’re able to make award,” Barnett said. “Once we make award, our last piece is to have what we call debriefing with the offerors and letting them know why they were not able to get an award. This is helpful to them to continue to have contracts with the government in the future.”
The foundational knowledge taught by Barnett and his team of instructors is applicable to any USACE contract, he said.
“It’s all depending on the threshold of what the requirement is,” Barnett said. “We’re acknowledging what are their resources, also what is the value of the requirement.”
Typically, Formal Source selection is taught several times a year at the USACE Learning Center in Huntsville, Ala., Barnett said, and then if districts want to host it locally that’s something they put the request in about a year ahead of time.
“Galveston asked to host this event here,” Barnett said. “What we teach here is not just Galveston based, but it applies throughout the Corps of Engineers and the Army.”
Instructors test students’ knowledge with daily quizzes, Barnett said, with a final test at the end of the week.
Class members earned thirty continuous learning points after passing the final test.
Instructors came from ERDC, the Great Lakes and Ohio River Division (LRD), the Tulsa District (SWT), Small Business, and the Southwestern Division Office of Counsel.
“We have a wide range (of instructors) and that allows us to have different dynamics from the center, district and division levels,” Barnett said.
This arrangement also gives instructors a chance to share lessons learned with each other and their classes, Barnett said.
“When we’re here, we also have conversations with each other, share experiences and ask each other questions and collaborate with one another, same as the students in the class,” Barnett said. “It brings value to all of us, not just the instructors but the students as well.”
Barnett said he enjoys sharing his experience with students because he usually learns something from them, he said.
“This is my fourteenth year with the Corps of Engineers and in the contracting industry,” Barnett said. “This is my sixth year teaching this course. I just enjoy being able to use my experiences and to share and to continue to learn even when I’m in this class. Even an instructor gets an opportunity to learn new ways to do things.”
Among the many resources instructors give students during the class, one is the website www.procurement.army.mil or PAM as it’s affectionately known, according to instructor Khristina Sandoval, Great Lakes and Ohio River Division, Regional Business Oversight Branch chief.
“I’m a PAM champ,” Sandoval said. “Procurement.army.mil is a one stop shop for Formal Source Selection. If you’re looking for somewhere to start, trying to find templates and documents, you’ve never done source selection before, or you want to read up on some things, that’s going to be one of the first places we tell them to look regarding templates.”
Sandoval has been a course instructor since 2019.
“We want to make sure that when they leave here that they understand what’s related to formal source selection and where they can find all the tools, no matter what industry they’re in within the Corps of Engineers,” Sandoval continued.
They’ll always have PAM to count on, Sandoval said.
“Procurement.army.mil is one of the primary locations that house the resources,” Sandoval said. “There are so many resources there that are not just for contracting, it’s for the customer as well, it’s for the PM, it’s for the COR, the ACO – all the members of the PDT.”
New regulations and methods are added to the course periodically, as needed, Sandoval said.
“We‘ve got seasoned contracting professionals that just learned today that they’re authorized to do ‘X’,” Sandoval said. “That’s huge, because we do have a way of getting caught up in what we’ve done before.”
Joann McCue, SWG contracting officer, was one of the class members. She has 10 years of experience in contracting and she said she learned some valuable information from the course.
“I would definitely recommend others to take this course,” McCue said. “This class teaches you what you should be looking for, how you should be evaluating, how you should write up your document, so that when it goes to the next level, they are able to make an informed decision, based on those write ups.”
McCue said the information she gathered in class will help her communicate more effectively with the PDT and compose higher quality Requests for Proposal (RFPs).
“Learning different types of techniques, different types of approaches, being able to communicate those better as a contracting officer to my board members and for the board members to understand what we’re looking to get out of them to be able to put together a great either MATOC (Multiple Award Task Order Contract) or SATOC (Single Award Task Order Contract), to make sure what we’re putting out is good enough for the district’s mission,” McCue concluded.
For information about Formal Source Selection classes, visit https://ulc.usace.army.mil/CourseListDetail?CtrlNbr=183