United States Navy contracting officer warranting process

Abstract

The purpose of this project was to investigate how Navy contracting activities warrant the contracting officers under their purview. The FAR and DAWIA establishes minimum training, education, and experience requirements for federal contracting officers. However, most commands implement supplementary requirements. Additionally, we wanted to discover the basis for the selection criteria utilized. The goal was to discover the general, "unwritten" requirements for Navy warranting, and whether the process created inconsistencies in the contracting workforce. We expected to find that all commands set different internal procedures for warranting above DAWIA minimums. Furthermore, we expected to find ad hoc processes tailored to the organization's mission and to the individual Appointing Official. According to this research, we discovered that warranting procedures were fragmented within and across Navy contracting commands. This fragmentation could potentially lead to inconsistencies in contracting officer knowledge, abilities, and capabilities. While this project was limited in scope, it is an initial step into the much broader research area of DoD contracting officer-warranting processes.