Incident Blanket Purchase Agreement and Dispatch Priority List Process
This paper describes the processes for competing and awarding Incident Blanket Purchase Agreements (I-BPA) and the creation of the Dispatch Priority Lists (DPL) after the award of the I-BPAs.
Solicitation
1. The Contracting Officer (CO) will conduct market research in the region to determine the appropriate set-aside status of the solicitation. The solicitation can be set-aside for Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSB), small businesses in Historically Underutilized Business Zones (HUBZone), and/or small business concerns. Solicitations will utilize a cascading set-aside if they are making multiple awards and do not have enough SDVOSB and HUBZone concerns to meet the agency’s needs.
In July 2009 the Forest Service received direction from the Office of Management and Budget that HUBZone and SDVOSB concerns should be treated with parity when determining the set-aside status of solicitations. Based on that direction, the following process is used. Solicitations issued prior to that time distinguished between HUBzone and SDVOSB, giving first priority to HUBzone concerns.
First Tier
HUBZone and SDVOSB business concerns will be considered in the first tier of the 2-tier cascading set aside procedure providing market research indicates these concerns are available.
a. If market research indicates there are HUBZone and SDVOSB concerns within the solicitation area and the CO has a reasonable expectation that offers will be received from two or more of each category, the CO shall set aside the procurement for these groups in the first tier of the set aside. (Refer to Section C, Clause C.1, 52.219-3, Notice of Total HUBZone Set-Aside and 52.219-27, Notice of Total Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business Set-Aside.)
b. The solicitation can be set aside for either HUBZone or SDVOSB concerns in the first tier if the market research indicates only one of these categories is available in the market.
c. The solicitation will be totally set aside for small business concerns if the market research indicates the market is absent of HUBZone and SDVOSB concerns(Refer to Section C, Clause C.1, 52.219-6, Notice of Total Small Business Set-Aside)
Second Tier
a. If there are insufficient HUBZone and SDVOSB concerns to meet the agency’s needs, the second tier will be set aside for small business concerns (Refer to Section C, Clause C.1, 52.219-6, Notice of Total Small Business Set-Aside).
Award
The Government will award an Agreement to those quoters offering a reasonable price and resources that are technically acceptable. (See Section E.2, Basis of Award). Reasonable price, technically acceptable is the basis for the best value determination. The CO will not award an I-BPA to a vendor, regardless of its small business type, if its price is unreasonable. Quoters must meet the minimum specifications listed in D.2. Technical acceptability and past performance are determined on a “pass/fail” basis.
Multiple awards will be made to small business concerns as determined by the set aside status of the solicitation. If two tiers of a cascading set aside exist, awards will first be made to concerns in the first tier followed by concerns in the second tier if there are not enough concerns in the first tier to meet the agency’s needs.
Dispatch Priority List
Some resources have attributes that are advantageous to the Government (e.g. water handling equipment, gray water trucks and service trucks with mechanics). However, some resources do not offer attributes that are considered advantageous to the government.
Vendors offering resources with advantages will submit that information with their quote. Each advantage is assigned a point value that is found in section D.6.2 of the solicitation. The total points for each resource’s advantages are then divided by the price resulting in the resource offering the highest total advantage per dollar being ranked highest on the dispatch list. Resources without advantages are ranked on the dispatch priority list by price, with the lowest price at the top of the list.
Orders issued against awarded I-BPAs will be made using the following order of preference as described in D.6.1 Dispatch Priority:
a. Any order issued under the awarded BPAs will be made first to a HUBZone or SDVOSB concern if the solicitation was set-aside for those concerns
b. If there are no HUBZone or SDVOSB concerns available, orders will be issued to small business concerns.
Tied prices/CBA scores that occur will be resolved by providing first preference to small businesses that are also labor surplus area concerns, with any remaining ties resolved using programmatically driven random ranking within the VIPR system.