Solicitation Waiver, Create wildfire preparedness and planning tools for NDF

The Nevada Division of Forestry (NDF) is seeking a sole source procurement with Timmons Group for a comprehensive wildfire preparedness and planning project through a solicitation waiver. The contract, valued at approximately $430,000, will run from May 1, 2025, to April 30, 2030, and includes four primary deliverables: enhancing the Wildfire Community Assessment Tool (CAT) with training video creation, maintaining data for the West-Wide Wildfire Risk Assessment (WWRA), providing five years of annual hosting and data services for Nevada's Natural Resources and Fire Information Portal, and developing a Living Community Wildfire Protection Plan tool. The project aims to help communities identify and mitigate wildfire risk strategies, building upon previous work that has already assessed over 180 communities. Timmons Group has been the established vendor for these tools since 2022, having developed and maintained the existing systems. The procurement is justified as a sole source contract due to the potential disruption and significant re-evaluation costs that would result from competitive bidding, which would require abandoning existing $475,000 investments.

The contract will be funded through federal grants, specifically the Community Assessment Tool (CAT), West-Wide Wildfire Risk Assessment (WWRA), and Living Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP). No specific set-aside designations or restrictions on responding organizations are mentioned in the documentation. Timmons Group is the incumbent vendor and has proprietary coding and design for the existing systems, which provides a strong rationale for continued engagement. The estimated annual hosting fees range between $15,000 and $17,000, with the current estimate set at $16,500. The total contract value is approximately $430,000, covering the five-year period from 2025 to 2030. The solicitation waiver emphasizes the unique nature of the tools and the vendor's specialized expertise in wildfire preparedness and planning technologies, which supports the decision to proceed with a non-competitive procurement process.