Capital City Country Club
Chapter Meeting
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
President Donna Smith called the meeting to order at 12:08 p.m.
Pledge: Donna Smith
Prayer: Mr. St. Charles
No agenda. We distributed the election ballots. A nomination was made to accept the ballot. It was accepted and approved.
Donna introduced our Speaker, Veronica McCrackin, Governance Manager with DMS works with bill making, procurement laws, state purchasing, professional development program and a member of the Florida Bar.
She spoke on training and certifications for the Division of State Purchasing. State purchasing leverage the power of buying for the state and from (county, city, universities) to buy off of the state term contracts, million dollar contracts posted on the website and do global purchasing and everyone can buy off of the contracts. Have a team of 4 people helping revise the curriculum. The certifications offered are: FCCM, FCCN, FCPA, FCPM and PMP. Currently, have suspended all training to revise the curriculum and improve it. DMS have piloted the FCCN course and another one approaching. Did an assessment survey to Purchasing Directors to see how many need to be trained. It showed 193 existing Contract Managers and 2000 need training to be certified.
Effective 2014, Contract Managers that handle contracts over a $100,000 annually must be certificated within 24 months. Were able to extend everyone certification to 6/2015 for contract managers. The Purchasing Directors will notify who need to be certified. It has merged with advance and accountability, with 1 three day course with a test. There will be a Pilot session with different agencies, a passing score of 80. In December, will have a two beta sessions that will go agency wide to see if we are hitting our target to see what is working. Need to know what is working and what is not. Working with DFS to get the calendar sat. Will launch Contract Manager late January or early February held at Betty Easley, class size is 35 people. For Contract Negotiator – is revising and hoping it will go thru the same pilot and beta process and will launch in February. Everyone that were due to expire this year, they offered re-certification. Some wanted the date extended but could not.
For the PMP, DMS will hire a private contractor to teach this class. This is a very rigorous class. Have to be accepted as a candidate and you have to have completed projects in order to take the exam. The information is on the website.
Purchasing Agents and Purchasing Managers - have elected to discontinue, no longer a certification and will be a one-time certificate program and extended everyone out to December, 2015. This program will go under a revision.
Questions
Lori Newman asked about the Contract Manager criteria and Veronica stated they are reviewing.
The FCCN, will have to be in the position for a certain period of time. Will be launching classes for FCCN certification. DMS will send out notification outlining the classes. There was a dialog of the criteria for different types of certifications.
There were several guest.
The Holiday party will be December 9th and the charities are the Leon County Sheriff Department and Tallahassee Police Department with collection of small teddy bears.
The lucky ticket was #024 for FREE lunch in January.
The meeting adjourned at 1:00 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Dalphine Clack
Secretary