The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) development of requirements documents is a collaboration across HUD program offices.  The Office of the Chief Procurement Officer (OCPO) is responsible for obtaining all goods and services required by HUD efficiently and in the most cost-effective manner possible, while program offices are responsible for preparing the requirements documents and submitting an actionable requisition to OCPO.  Once OCPO receives the requisition package, OCPO reviews the requirements documents in the package for any errors or disconnects between tasks and deliverables.  When the requisition package is considered actionable, OCPO accepts the requirements documents and moves the package forward for solicitation.

HUD has processes to facilitate collaboration during the development of requirements documents, including the Acquisition Liaison Unit (ALU), the Integrated Project Team (IPT), and the Integrated Acquisition Team (IAT).  The ALU and the IAT are led by OCPO.  The ALU provides support to program offices by providing contracting expertise when program offices are developing requirements documents.  The IAT promotes effective and timely collaboration between stakeholders early in the acquisition planning process.  The IPT, which is led by program offices, also brings together all stakeholders in the early stages of developing the requirement to ensure that the requirements are defined early in the acquisition life cycle.  

Even though HUD has processes for the development of requirements documents, the acquisition workforce across HUD faces common challenges.  The four challenges most frequently mentioned by both OCPO and program office staff members are related to requirements documents processes, collaboration, roles and responsibilities, and the capacity of OCPO.  Process-related challenges refer to processes used to complete requirements documents, including the ALU, IPT, and IAT.  Collaboration-related challenges include references to a lack of engagement.  Challenges related to roles and responsibilities were cited with mentions of confusion or friction about roles and responsibilities of personnel involved in developing requirements documents.  Challenges related to the capacity of OCPO refer to turnover, understaffing, and bandwidth of OCPO staff.  

We provided HUD with three recommendations to improve requirements documents processes and requirement documents roles and responsibilities.