Go Big G Z IRSC PreSolicitation Q and A.pdf

Go Big G-Z IRSC Q&A Pre-solicitation meeting held Thursday, April 18th, 2023.

Q1. Is prescribed burning associated with this solicitation?

A. No, prescribed burning was analyzed to be included in this contract and is not included in this contract anymore.

Q2. Is the termination date of December 31st, 2030, a hard date? If there is a need to dry biproducts from later years (2028/2029) it might be difficult to meet that date, would some sort of extension be utilized to allow for removal?

A. We will be looking into this internally and will reassess the hard deadlines for this issue and address it in the final solicitation.

Q3. The solicitation mentions awarding non-saw products at a capped tonnage for payment per treatment area, what does this mean?

A. It's a cap tonnage, so that way we do not violate the anti-deficiency act by awarding more volume than the Forest Service can pay for. We are going to cap it based on the amount of funding available when bids are reviewed. What that does is that we will no longer pay you to continue to remove that low value deficit product, you may elect to continue to remove that product, but we are no longer subsidizing the removal. That is also why there is the cut skidding deck option if that's all we can get for one of those areas. The removal is secondary based on available funding.

Q4. Are contractors required to provide delivered market value prices for products, where the products are to be delivered and cost for delivery?

A. Yes, it’s additional pricing info that the Forest Service will use, from all contractors that bid, for residual and log cost appraisals. This information will not be shared publicly and will not be a factor on award but is required with bids. In scoping with industry, it was identified as a need to be open and transparent with contractors by asking industry on all cost data to determine appropriate timber rates for each treatment area and product. The final Forest Service appraisal will not be shared, and this additional data will be helpful to ensure proper rates are in place when timber is awarded. Only the biomass costs for removal will be evaluated in bids for award. Any costs associated with the removal and logging costs for sawtimber being requested will only be used for appraisal purposes and timber rate determinations, not for evaluation to award.

Q5. How do “awarded firm/fixed unit prices prevail and not be renegotiated” align with differing appraisal prices for products?

A. Service contract items are associated with the rates paid to perform the services outlined in the Schedule of Items. These costs will be firm/fixed prices and will not change over the life of the contract. As for pricing for products, the bid premiums are to be bid as a total value bid premium on a treatment area. You give us a bid price in your proposal, under the conditions that we described, and that will be binding. That bid premium is going to stay locked per timber treatment area unless it falls into deficit conditions or if our timber rates go higher than our recent sales. If the timber rates fall outside the given range, we will reevaluate those bid premiums. If there are change of conditions for service items there could be changes made through bilateral modification, but otherwise rates will remain firm-fixed. The timber rates may fluctuate between the different treatment areas based solely on the logging costs and value of products independently from service work quotes. This should have no bearing on the service Item rates - if costs/quotes are shifted to one item from another, this is called “imbalanced” pricing and is a violation of FAR. Award should not be made to vendors that quote with identified “imbalanced” pricing.

Q6. In a bidder’s technical proposal, can we generally describe the equipment and/or subcontractor to be used to complete the items? With fluctuations in equipment and subcontractor availability how is that handled in the proposal?

A. Your proposal reflects a contractor’s ability at this time, everything in the technical proposal will be evaluated and will be a determining factor in award.

Provide the best information you have right now in terms of your abilities, equipment, and subcontractors. All subcontractors will have to be approved by the CO at the time of submittal. We want to know how you will be successful throughout the life of the contract with your subcontractors and can adjust through any changes during the life of the contract. As for equipment, if you are staying with the original premise of the type of equipment used at time of award, you are meeting the intent and goal of the contract. If you identify needs for change during the contract if there is good communication between the CO/COR and are meeting the original goals and specifications of the contract changes to equipment can be made while under contract. The forest and the Stewardship team are highly flexible and willing to work with contractors.

Q7. Hazardous low value, hazardous fuels. That’s like brush and naughty juniper, and non timber fuels?

A. Definition of hazardous low value, hazardous fuels is anything going to be removed from the contract area to make a product. It is the “guts and feathers” of the sawlogs, cull logs, small diameter trees with no merchantable timber.

Anything else you can put on a truck or in a chipper and get those fuels off the landscape. That is what the FS is looking for. We want to maximize the amount of products getting to market. Whether that’s a power plant, going for pulp, clean chips, dirty chips, or sawlogs.

That is also part of why we are going with a total value of timber products regardless of whether they’re low value or not. Lock the low value material in at a penny a ton. That will not change with the total value, single rate. Premiums will not be applied to the low-value products. Getting one single rate across all products allows you, the contractor, to maximize where you are going to take that product. Say one of those pieces that made a minimum sawlog piece size that normally would go on a truck, could potentially make its way into the chip pile. As long the FS is capped at that tonnage of what we are going to pay the contractor to remove for the non-saw, the FS has protected itself form violating the Anti-

Deficiency Act.

Q8. Another question to follow up with that about the low value hazards fuels. I assume you want us to spend money removing low value hazards fields because there's a chip depth that you don't want on the landscape. I'm wondering why don't we just masticate that low value hazardous fuels? Every time I've done it out there in the in the woods, it's been cheaper for us just to masticate it until it becomes too high of a chip depth, so to speak.

A. Two Parts to this answer. Contractually and from the Forest’s End-Results standpoint.

Contractually: this contract is fully set up for the contractor to tell the FS how they propose to treat hazardous fuels. Through an alternate proposal which will be submitted along with the primary proposal that describes exactly the treatments set up in the Schedule of Items, and/or through the final

Implementation Plan that will be completed under Mandatory Item 1. You tell the

FS how you propose to treat a certain area in the Implementation Plan, and the FS will either accept that treatment or ask for a revision based on the Design Criteria from the NEPA decision. If doing an Alternate Proposal at time of solicitation, there needs to be a submittal of different pricing than what is priced in the primary proposal. At time of award, the alternate proposal is evaluated independently. The FS will evaluate the contractor’s primary proposal against all the other contractors’ primary proposals. It is like the contractor submitting an alternate proposal then becomes two contractors with two proposals. The FS will weigh the pros and cons of both the alternate and primary proposals submitted by a contractor and determine what do we like about it. What don’t we like about it? We could even take parts of it and go back to the table with you and negotiate at time of award. We really like your primary proposal for 70% of it. But this 30% of your alternate, we love it, right? That’s called clarifications/negotiations and that can happen prior to time of award.

Forest’s standpoint on End-Results: This needs to be discussed further with the

Forest’s Fuels staff if a contractor proposes to masticate all units. It does come down to fuel loading and chip depth. And if it's going to be a thick mat of chips, we're probably not going to want that. But if it's well distributed and we can still apply prescribed fire through there, that would be the key to accepting the plan.

So, describe to the FS in the Implementation phase of the contract what you are proposing for treatment in a certain area, the FS will then accept the recommendation or not. At the end of the day the end-results desired is to remove and/or treat as much hazardous fuels possible on the landscape.

Q9. To Clarify, about the optional removal non saw timber products? The way that its written, it says remove all, but if we opted to remove like say, clean chips or we opted to remove just hog fuel. Are we obligated to remove all guts and feathers? If we’re doing a clean chip, we don’t really want small tops and limbs. So, if awarded this contract is there the option to only take what is good for clean chips?

A. We're asking for one price for removing everything that is awarded. It is based on what we award, we award it to you as clean chips because you say in your proposal - the only thing we have a market for right now is clean chips and that's all we want to remove! That's an evaluation criterion. We ask you, how are you going to maximize removing of all or as much of the material? And if you say, well, we can't remove all, we have a strong market for this, but not for that. And that's across the board like we're going to see from multiple offers. We're going to see those differences. We're going to see what you've said and maybe that brings us into reality of what will work.

We want to see as much go down the road as we can and if the only thing we're going to see go down the road is clean chips and not dirty chips with that award, that's what we do. Now, that doesn't mean that the door is closed either. So, it's within scope to remove dirty chips with the clean chips. Now, if at time of award, that's all the market is and that's all we can award, that may be what we do for treatment area one maybe a new market for timber treatment area two and so on. The FS doesn’t want to close the door on this contract by not being flexible on how material goes down the road. But we are going to make the award in the best interest of the government, and the best award we can to get the most products off the landscape.

Q10. Is the government going to provide any materials for re-construction? Specifically culverts. There are a lot of them. Would they be provided to the sale area or where would we need to pick up those materials? Or are we buying that stuff as part of the package? 248 culverts.

A. We will need to follow up with the question of the FS supplying culverts if there is a need for culvert replacements. We will answer this question in the final solicitation. The 248 culverts listed in the Schedule of Items is the maximum amount of potential culvert replacing that could occur within the contract area.

These are gross estimates. During the Implementation Plan phase under

Mandatory Item 1, the contractor will analyze the contract area haul routes for any re-construction needs and develop the road design.

Q11. The plan to analyze the road, to create the analysis. Is that what is supposed to be done by September 30th? We are going to need to describe to you how its going to be done?

Create the plan of how the analysis will be done?

A. The analysis is the plan that will be completed by September 30th. The intent of that part of Mandatory Item 1, Road Analysis is what needs to be done for all of the FS system roads used for haul roads to get the product off of the landscape.

Where do we need roads widened? Where is there a need for new culverts? Etc.

Pretty much going to have to check every culvert to determine if it needs replaced, just cleaned, etc. We need you to drive roads. We need you to figure that out. That's why we're asking you to do that plan. We need additional capacity on the forest to be able to handle this stuff. So as far as the culvert goes, we'll investigate that. We'll have a cleaner answer with the final solicitation of whether we're going to do some government furnished property for the culverts, and how we will account for the cost of the linear feet of replacing culverts.

The analysis themselves will not be submitted with your proposal. You will write a proposal to get the award. The proposal is going to say how are you going to do the road analysis plan. And then when you get the award, then you're actually going to do the road analysis plan. What we need up front is this cost. What is it going to take to replace that culvert under that spec? So that way we have a price up front. So that way when you identify this culvert needs to be replaced and it's a 48 inch pipe. We've already got a price set and then you just tell us this one needs to be replaced. We go verify and say Yep, you're right. It needs to be replaced that way. We're not driving every single one of those roads. We're going to pay you to drive every one of those roads and tell us what needs to be done to get our timber out of the woods.

Q12. Are all the optional items mandatory to put a price? For example, hand thinning. Could I leave that blank?

A. We're going to need a price for it. Tell us in your proposal you have no intentions of doing hand thinning, but we're still going to ask for a price. This is the same situation as the mastication question brought up earlier in the meeting. Submit an alternate proposal of your intentions to treat hand thin areas in a different manner and we will evaluate your two proposals as two separate proposals. Also, this would be identified in your Implementation Plan that areas that are identified as hand thin are proposed to be treated in a different manner and the FS will approve or disapprove. If up front you do not intend at all to do hand thinning, state this in your proposal and submit an alternate. The only item that you do not have to give us a price for is the Timber Transport item. If you're intending on putting any products on a rail and sending it cross country, that's a separate price.

We built that in to allow for the scope to allow for it and to get a price for it for any surplus products. So if you have a market somewhere else then we can allow for it. You do not need to price that out for award if desired.

Q13. There needs to be a bit more clarification on specific areas. Such as the re-construction and meadow units. The more complexity levels that could be identified the easier to price. I'd be concerned with some of these bid items giving you a realistic price with an unknown area. So the more defined parameters would be beneficial, I think to everybody, to make sure that you know we're not under bidding or overcharging.

A. We are not asking for quotes as of right now. The solicitation period is going to allow for enough time to access the project to be able to see all these areas. As far as the Meadow units, it is very low variability that have been identified. Very open with the majority of the work being “whip falling”. The amount of variability that was identified and discussed was not enough to warrant “step ladder” pricing. We tried to identify where we needed “step ladder” pricing for where there is going to be some change in variability and that was much lower.

As far as the road work is concerned, we knew internally we would need to do a bit more work on that. We will beef that up from the comments here in the meeting and have more internal discussions.

Any other items that anyone here can and/or has identified that are weak, and would be difficult to bid as is, please send directly to me (Curtis Yocum) through an email.

Q13. For the Arch surveys. A map will be provided? But it actually calls for a certified archeologist. What work would that archeologist be doing if we are already provided a map? Can our contractors be allowed to go GPS and buffer the sites? What work do you envision the certified archeologist doing?

A. We need the certified archeologist to verify the actual size of the sites, find the perimeter of those sites, and GPS and flag them to be protected. Then the Forest archeologist is going to inspect and accept that work. The known data that is currently going to be provided is old GPS data from years ago and needs to be verified. The certified archeologist is needed for the skills to verify the correct location and size of the known sites. We will internally discuss this further to see if there is a better way to quantify this work since the size of these sites is unknown.

They could be long and linear in size and/or small. No official archeological report is required, just GPS files of flagged and verified sites for mapping the protected areas.

Q14. I am familiar with the A-Z contract, can you clarify what G-Z portion means? Is A to F the

NEPA?

A. The whole premise of the G to Z tool was built off the A to Z tool. With the G to Z tool the NEPA is done. That is the big difference between the G to Z and the A to

Z. A to Z is NEPA through everything and those are set up like a BPA with purchase agreements with one contractor. Once the NEPA is done then the professional services get done, then the timber and other treatments get awarded and done.

It is just a different tool, and different concept. We found the big bottle neck was not getting the NEPA completed, but the actual implementation of a project. The field preparation in order to get to the product removal portion of a project. On the Fremont-Winema the real bottleneck was identified not for NEPA completion but the actual implementation. That is how G to Z was conceptualized and built as a tool to alleviate these Forest constraints.

Q15. Where do the bird surveys fall into it? Who is responsible for that? And where does that information get passed along?

A. All surveys are already done, and there's a zip folder with the full NEPA document and everything needed for implementation from the NEPA. The intent here or idea is that once we have an awarded contract, you have everything as a contractor that we would have internally to prep, layout and implement this project and get it ready for a contract award to just do the logging.

Q16. Does the road analysis have to be done by a professional engineer or can it be done by a qualified individual, but lesser certification? Is there going to be a way to get paid for actual quantities found during the analysis and not what was originally bid on? Such as original bid is for 20 linear feet, and after analysis it’s shown to be 22 linear feet?

A. We are requiring a certified engineer to sign off on the plan. Meaning what gets done on the ground is between primary contractor, sub-contractor, as long as the plan is signed off by a certified engineer and then the plan with that signature is handed to the FS for our inspection and acceptance, that's what we're looking for.

Once we have the full analysis, we're going to do modifications at that point in time to actually award known quantities. The intent is that you give us a quality plan that then we can fill in those known quantities. So that way when we award the known quantity at the price you gave us, we're set. We're rolling. That's why that plan needs to be pretty good, needs to be signed off by an engineer. So that way when we populate the quantities, we're not having to go back and we're off by two linear feet. And now we've got to find the extra money for those two linear feet. That's an issue that we may say too bad. You gave us a plan. We award the contract. It's 20 feet, not 22 feet.

Q17. Are there any recent G to Z solicitations besides this one?

A. No, this is the first of the G to Z contract tool to be solicited. There are two more that will be on the heels of the Go Big G to Z IRSC out of California. One on the

Stanislaus NF, and one on the Plumas NF. There is one in the works out of region

6 on the Deschutes NF that is in early discussions. No timeline on that one at this time.

Q18. What if the timber cruise doesn’t come back the way we envisioned it? Is there a way to back out of the actual timber harvest of the contract without penalty?

A. Not going to say it will be without penalty. I'm going to say we're going to work with you to do the best thing that we can to get the most amount of work done under this contract. We do not want to just wipe our hands away of it. We've got

67,000 acres we want to get treated. We fully intend on working with you as the contractor. That's why a lot of this is set up, as optional items. We're going to award the maximum amount of work at time of award that we absolutely can.

And we're going to continue to award the work as we go. Now if we are in an impasse, you're like, there's no way we are going to remove the timber without losing our company, etc. We can Terminate for Convenience at the Forest Service discretion. As the primary contractor awarded this contract, expect to do the work, but at the end of the day, for an impasse, there's contractual mechanisms, and we're going to use those when we need to. So I'm not going to say you're off the hook. I'm going to say we're going to communicate. We're going to work with you. We're going to do the best thing that we can. Again, we want this to be a success.

Q19. What if after award of the contract, a wildfire breaks out in the contract area and changes the scope of the work? Takes out half or all of this project. Are there mechanisms in there to then back out of this contract with burnt wood not being worth anything?

A. This has been a major topic of discussion amongst our team with WO Forest management, how do we handle these in timber sales, IRTCs, and IRSCs. IRSCs are set up favorable for this topic as we don’t set hard sideboards if this situation occurs. It is too variable of a situation that in such the way the scenario is painted there is no clear way to approach that situation until it actually happens, and then we need to adjust. The contract will need to be reassessed, reanalyzed. We are going to work with you as the contractor. Let’s work together to get a new model of how to still get the desired end results.

We are going to work with whoever the awardee is if that situation does happen to make sure both parties are whole, both parties are going to still get end results. If at the end of the day, the only option we have is to terminate for convenience, we'll terminate for convenience.

Q20. Is there dedicated FS staffing as far as administration CORS to this project?

A. We currently have a group of people identified that include someone from sale prep, silviculture, someone with an archaeology background, COR level at the SO level who's a project manager who was brought in just to help out with projects like this. This will not be their only job or dedicated specifically to this contract. But we do have dedicated staff and a larger group than, for example on our IRSC post firework last summer.

Q21. What if there is a lawsuit challenging the NEPA?

A. There is low likelihood of this NEPA decision being challenged, however, anyone can sue us at any time. If that is the case, we stop work on the contract and wait for the Judge to tell us how to proceed. Once it is in the court’s hands that is all we can do as the FS and contractor.

Contractually there would be a stop work order issued and wait till a higher power within the judicial system tells us otherwise, and/or a termination for convenience could be issued at the FS discretion.

Q22. Is this a leave tree mark across the whole contract area? We will mark what to leave and everything else goes?

A. There is a combination of designation by prescription and then clump marking.

The intent of the clump marking is that it is hard to achieve the size of those clumps that we want to maintain just through designation by prescription. We found that it's most successful to have those areas designated and then the designation by prescription will then just have you leaving a basal area and individuals throughout the stand.

The contractor will tell us where those clumps will be marked throughout a unit based on the Prescription guidelines provided.

Q23. How far from here (Chiloquin District Office) is the project area?

A. A half an hour to an hour drive, depending which part of the project area you are trying to get to. There is still a pretty good amount of snow, but we anticipate it should start melting off pretty quick. Our intent is not to do the full solicitation until there's access for the majority of the project. I gave you all some timelines I think about a week from now, I'd like to get some responses back. Any of those suggestions, any of those, anything you didn't want to share today or issues that you identified that you just want to share with me, send them my way. I'm going to take the next week and analyze those and work with Judd, Emerson, and my team internally. We are then going to finalize the solicitation and get the final package posted to SAM.gov by the first or second week in May, with most likely giving that final solicitation period up to 45 days. If anyone feels that the solicitation time is not going to be enough time for you to get a solid proposal back to us with all this pricing information. Please let me know within the next week so that way we can take that into account.

Q24. I understand the market value you are wanting us to give as a bidder? How much we're going to get and where we're going to take it to. I think it would be more representative and fairer if the government got quarterly values from all the potential delivery spots.

Because there's going to be a differential for who gets delivered to where? I think that it would be more representative of the market if it was taken from the manufacturer rather than from the deliverer.

A. I'm going to have that conversation with the WO appraisal specialist. We did talk about this quite a bit as a full team with all the regional appraisal specialists. The

FS apparently years ago got away from asking industry for that exact data because we were no longer storing it, and that's when we switched over to the transaction evidence appraisal system. I don't think we want to entertain this right now as an agency asking for that information because where does it stop? Where do we set new policy? Where do we go with that info? We wanted to be specific for this projects time and space.

B.

We'll talk about it some more. Internally, as far as maybe a new approach of getting that type of data, but for right now, this is our plan. We are banking and really hoping that we're going to get a strong pool of proposals to get some good information there. If it's not good enough information and we don't feel that we have enough to hang our hat on, we're going to do some more homework. We're going to look into this some more most likely after award, but before the timber is awarded. Exactly what you just suggested may be done, but after award of the contract. Right now, this is the approach that we want to take as is allowed through the FAR and CFRs. I like this idea however and we'll entertain it potentially into the future.