NPS VALL Fuel Reduction and Management IDIQ 2016-2021

The National Park Service Intermountain Region awarded this Master IDIQ on September 23, 2016, to provide wildland hazard fuels reduction, vegetation management, and road maintenance services for Valles Caldera National Preserve, with a shared ceiling of $15 million and ordering authority that closed on September 23, 2021. The vehicle is no longer active; ordering closed over four years ago.

All 23 task orders issued under the vehicle supported NPS Intermountain Region operations exclusively. The work comprised cutting, slashing, chipping, hand-piling, mastication, vegetation manipulation, transport of vegetation, fuel modification zone construction, and road opening, construction, maintenance, and decommissioning—delivered primarily through hand-crew thinning and piling operations across defined geographic units (North Rim, South Mountain, Cerro Seco, Cerro San Luis, and San Antonio Mountain). Task orders reflected firm-fixed-price pricing and were subject to environmental restrictions, particularly seasonal constraints tied to endangered Jemez Mountains Salamander activity and migratory breeding-bird protection.

Competition concentrated heavily between two firms. Summitt Forests, Inc. and Sweat US LLC each received 12 and 11 orders respectively, holding equal shares of the $6.7 million combined potential value at $3.3 million apiece. Small business set-asides (22% of orders) went early in the vehicle's lifecycle; the remaining 18 orders (78%) were unrestricted. Five orders carried Total Small Business designations, awarded between September 2016 and September 2017, with values ranging from $99,440 to $634,950. Unrestricted orders spanned $67,095 to $576,750.

The vehicle obligated $6.7 million against its $15 million ceiling—a 45% utilization rate. Ordering momentum peaked in 2017 with seven orders, declining to three in 2019 before recovering to five in 2020. The most recent award occurred September 21, 2020, with completion dates extending into 2021. Work was performed at Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico.

This contract shall provide required services in support of the VALL, and the National Park Service (NPS), Intermountain Region. Typical work under this contract will include wildland hazard fuels reduction and disposal, and related road management activities and services. The contract will require cutting, slashing, chipping, and hand-piling of vegetation, mastication, vegetation manipulation, and/or transport of vegetation in compliance with the specific requirements of individual task orders. Task order work will include furnishing labor, supervision, transportation, operating supplies, and incidentals to perform all work necessary to conduct thinning, slashing, lop and scatter, mastication, selective slashing, pruning, fuel modification zone construction, hand-piling and cover, transportation of logs, chips, and other vegetation, road opening / construction / maintenance, road decommissioning, constructing road barriers/obstructions.