ACQ 265 Mission-Focused Services Acquisition (ACQ 265V)

Course Description:

This course is designed to improve your tradecraft in the acquisition of services. Using a multifunctional, team-oriented approach, it gives acquisition team members the tools and techniques to analyze and apply performance-based principles when developing requirements documents and effective business strategies for contractor-provided services. Built around the seven-step Service Acquisition Process, the course uses interactive, hands-on sessions to apply the principles to real requirements rather than read about them. It's designed for those who need to sharpen their skills in developing and defining service requirements, supporting business strategies, and managing contractor performance — and it gives experienced acquisition personnel a chance to deepen their command of the Service Acquisition Process.

The course follows the Service Acquisition Process through its phases. In Planning, participants form the services acquisition team and build the project plan, communication plan, and team charter; apply the Category Management approach the government uses to make smart buying decisions for services; establish the current cost, performance, and schedule baseline and assess future needs; perform a stakeholder analysis; develop high-level performance objectives; and conduct market research — identifying the information to collect, analyzing it for its impact on performance requirements, and compiling a market research report. In Develop, participants build a risk register; differentiate Performance Tasks, Performance Standards, and Acceptable Quality Levels; use the Acquisition Requirements Roadmap Tool (ARRT) to write the Performance Requirement Summary (PRS); analyze contract types and incentives and select the right type given the risk; examine the criteria used to evaluate proposals; and prepare the acquisition strategy. In Execute, participants select the best-value contractor based on evaluation factors and criteria, write a post-award meeting agenda, assess contractor performance against mission requirements, identify options for performance remediation, and complete a quad chart. Finally, the course looks at services acquisition from the industry side — how companies assess the opportunities and constraints they weigh in prioritizing market opportunities, bid and proposal resourcing, teaming, and strategy, and the criteria industry uses to make bid decisions — so the government team understands how its requirements and strategy land with the firms it hopes will compete.

This course is taught by Melinda Milheim, JD, who spent her federal career in the acquisition workforce. She served as a Contract Specialist and COR for the U.S. Navy and the HHS / IHS, where she worked on more than $7.7 billion in federal contracts — mostly services contracts, spanning RDT&E, medical, IT, major weapon-systems, and engineering programs. She draws on that experience, along with her law degree and MBA studies, to teach the why behind the how — so participants leave with sharper judgment, not just a stack of slides. An award-winning DAU/WarU (DAWIA and FAI) instructor, she has taught more than 1,000 federal acquisition workforce students across 20-plus agencies.

Best for: members of a service acquisition team — contracting officers, contract specialists, contracting officer's representatives, quality assurance personnel, and the requiring-activity and program staff who develop and execute performance requirements and business strategies for contracted services — at both defense and civilian agencies.

Format: Five days + 3 hours of required “pre-work”, delivered in person or virtually, 40 CLPs/4.0 CEU. Phoenix Canyon issues every attendee a certificate of completion documenting the number of training hours as well as CEUs and CLPs earned, which employers may count toward Continuous Learning or Professional Development requirements at their discretion. Phoenix Canyon is a DAU/WarU Equivalent Provider.

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You might also consider

• Building Better Service Requirements — a focused workshop on the requirements-analysis work that sits at the heart of a services acquisition, for teams that want to go deeper on defining what they actually need.

• Performance-Based Acquisition — the broader performance-based approach behind the seven-step process, applied across services and beyond.