James Rich

James Rich, PhD

Dr. Rich had 35 years of contracting expertise with the Army Corps of Engineers prior to his retirement in 2015. During this time, he held numerous leadership positions, including service as the Chief, Contracting Division for the Corps’ Baltimore, Kansas City and Galveston districts. He also served as Chief of Contracting for the Kuwait Emergency Recovery Office (KERO) following Desert Storm and Chief of the Contracting IPT for the $3 billion Pentagon Renovation in 1999 to 2000.

DAWIA certified in both contracting and project management he has extensive experience in large dollar federal source selection to include serving as Contracting Officer for the Army Residential Communities Initiative, a large scale privatization initiative designed to improve family housing across the Army. In 2006 served as Contracting Officer for all USACE A-76 competitions to include the enterprise-wide IT competition, the largest A-76 competition in the Federal government that year.

In his final position with the USACE he served as Chief of Workforce Development at the USACE HQ where he managed workforce development, education and training strategies for 1,400 civilian contracting specialists and an additional 2000 non-contracting USACE personnel coded as members of the Army Acquisition Workforce.

A graduate of the Army Senior Leader Development Program he twice received the Secretary of the Army - Outstanding Contracting Officer Specialized Contracting award and a Bronze Order of the de Fleury medal from the USACE Chief of Engineers.

Dr. Rich has taught contracting in a number of capacities. He was an instructor for the USACE PROSPECT Training Program, taught for the Army at Command and General Staff College, taught graduate level contracting courses at Old Dominion University and is currently instructing and serving a Faculty Program Coordinator for the University of Virginia in the Procurement and Contract Management Program.

He holds a Masters in Public Administration (MPA) and a Ph.D. in Urban Studies, Public Policy Analysis. Though retired from federal service he remains active in his profession serving on the NCMA national Board of Advisors and as a career mentor for participants in the NCMA Contract Management Leadership Development Program.