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Is Contract Management a Career for Me? xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Professor xxxxxxxxxxx Contract and Purchasing Negotiation Techniques – BUS 340 November 26, 2010

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Contract Management is defined as: the work of managing a contract for goods, services or works, which includes monitoring performance, commercial aspects, delivery, improvement, complaints and customer satisfaction. The Federal Acquisition Regulation includes a set of four performance objectives: (1) to satisfy the customer in terms of cost, quality, and timeliness of the delivered product or service, (2) to minimize administrative operating cost, (3) to conduct business with integrity, fairness, and openness, and (4) to fulfill public policy objectives. Incorporating these objectives and operating under the clear definition, is critical to a Contracting Officer or Specialist.
Before I was in the contracting field, I was in logistics in the military. Some of my duties were as follows: Establishes and maintains stock records and other records; establishes and maintains automated and manual accounting records, posts receipts and turn-ins; reviews and verifies quantities received against shipping documents; prepares and maintains records on equipment usage, operation, maintenance, modification, and calibration; processed inventories, surveys, and warehousing documents; prepares, annotates,, and distributes shipping documents; performs accounting and sales functions in self-service supply. These are just a few examples of what I did in logistics.
Logistics, to me, was another way, and at the time, the only form of acquisition that I knew of. I wasn’t aware of all the things that went on in acquiring a supply. I used our automated retail supply system to