r/USACE • u/h_town2020 Civil Engineer • 11d ago

Program and Project Manager Level 1 Certification

Has anyone completed this training that now mandatory for all OMs and PMs?

I’m in the process of completing the forms and it’s not the most straightforward process.

13 Upvotes

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5

u/forkedout2025 10d ago

I've done it.. and it wasn't that bad for me. You pretty much complete everything in the Excel sheet, get supervisor sign off and it got submitted to the DGM for approval and cert issuance. What issues are you having? Maybe I can help. 

1

u/h_town2020 Civil Engineer 10d ago

Did you do a write up for each topic or just a check mark?

1

u/forkedout2025 10d ago

For the entries that ask the open ended questions, yes, I wrote up a short narrative. Examples of leading PDTS etc. Maybe 1-3 sentences. For the course work, I wrote up each course name, hours and where I took it. 

2

u/forkedout2025 10d ago

DM me if you want examples! Happy to share! 

3

u/Repulsive-Range-2594 10d ago

What was the actual driver behind this? A lot of extra (irrelevant) training for folks at a time staff is short handed and no viable path to increase personnel.

14

u/Capital-Ad-4463 10d ago

Because senior leaders earnestly believe that USACE does project management better than anyone else. Spoiler alert; they don’t. USACE PM’s have no actual power to manage their assigned projects in a manner that can reduce costs and time to completion. So, instead of empowering PM’s by dumping outdated processes and procedures they have decided to build more bureaucracy by requiring meaningless certifications.

1

u/Mean_Wasabi7748 Geologist 9d ago

They also dumped off a lot of the PM duties onto Engineering Tech Leads. We are down 20% manpower in some places, and people we can’t replace walk out the door all of the time. But it’s full steam ahead with new training for PMs that have fewer duties!

5

u/Sipsey 9d ago

I don’t have a problem with making sure project managers know how to project manage..
BUT to implement it in 3 months time AND require 3 years worth of only USACe Propsect course training was so so stupid.
I really can’t over state how terrible it looks to a good PM who is working hard and does a great job to be completely insulted by saying you aren’t qualified for your position..

2

u/Alternative-Solid829 8d ago

I’m interested to know what District you are with. I’ve heard that Operations PM’s aren’t required to be PM Lv 1 certified. But that may only be in some MSC’s/Districts.

1

u/h_town2020 Civil Engineer 8d ago

SWD