12444821F0001 BPA Call

Limited-Sources Justification

United States Department of Agriculture

FAR 8.405 Federal Supply Schedules

Multiple Award Schedule Program

1. Identification of the agency and the contracting activity.

USDA, Forest Service

Office of the Chief

Work Environment & Performance Office

201 14th Street SW

Washington, DC 20024

2.Description of services required to meet the agency’s needs

a. History: Chief Christiansen is re-convening a small group of leaders to check in

on the progress of the original Explorers group in working towards aligning our

mission delivery in a way that is values-based, purpose-driven and relationship

focused. This is a continuation of work that took place with the same vendor in

the fall and winter of 2018 (FY18-19).

b. Reason for the proposed Action: With recent and upcoming legislation, budget

modernization, and stirring events within our communities, there is great need to

spend some strategic time to dive into our progress on the interconnection of

work and work environment issues and how to balance our mission delivery and

care for our workforce. In order for a fundamentally different approach to

succeed, the Forest Service needs to continue to interconnect efforts around the

work with efforts on our Work Environment. This group will explore these

interconnections and make recommendations on pace and staging of actions and

next steps.

c. General description of requirement: Re-establish a collaborative meeting design

process that builds re-commitment of former and interest and commitment of

new Explorers participants, establish four (3-4) facilitated off-site meetings as

well as in-between virtual updates to chart progress and map out next steps on FS

work environment and performance change inside and out, clear game plan with

accountability to activate on group agreements; Need to revisit systems map

work already created by the Explorers 1.0 on what it means for each workflow to

be anchored to the Forest Service values-based, purpose-driven, relationship focused

approach, suitable for sharing.

d. Estimated Value: $300,000-600,000 (6-12 months)

3.The circumstances and rationale for limiting competition.

8.405-6(a)(1)(i)(B). Metropolitan Group has been the primary consultant for helping the agency align our systems, structures and rewards to being values-based, purpose-driven and relationship focused with more than a decade of experience directly related to this work. They were the vendor used for the efforts in 2018.

 8.405-6(a)(1)(i)(C). METROPOLITAN GROUP is the only firm capable of providing the services without the USDA Forest Service experiencing substantial duplication of cost that could not be expected to be recovered through competition and would result in unacceptable delays in fulfilling its requirements. Services are unique and highly specialized; this work is a logical follow-on order that represents the best value.

 4. A description of the market research conducted among schedule holders and the results or a statement of the reason market research was not conducted.

Market research was not conducted; However, notice posting was done on beta.SAM.gov. No other provider would be a feasible option, no other efforts were made to obtain competition.  Statutory requirement to obtain maximum practicable competition in simplified acquisitions is met where agency uses competitive procedures in establishing blanket purchase agreements (BPA) with multiple vendors; under these circumstances, there is no requirement that the agency conduct a further competition among the BPA holders in connection with each individual purchase order subsequently issued under the BPAs.  This vendor competed and was selected under the Blanket Purchase Agreement. 

Awarded contract 12344V19A0003 to unknown vendor for unknown amount on 2020-10-26.