"Local Services Needs" Criteria Used in Conjunction with Workload and Other Factors to Make Field Delegation Decisions To: " WRD Archive File, Reston, VA " Subject: "Local Services Needs" Criteria Used in Conjunction with Workload and Other Factors to Make Field Delegation Decisions Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 12:54:18 -0400 From: "Isabelle Halley des Fontaines, Chief, Br. Admin. Mgmt. Sys., Reston, VA " In Reply Refer To: Mail Stop 205 MEMORANDUM September 26, 1997 To: Division Administrative Officers From: /s/ John K. Peterson Chief, Office of Acquisition and Federal Assistance Subject: "Local Services Needs" Criteria Used in Conjunction with Workload and Other Factors to Make Field Delegation Decisions The attached document represents the initial "local services needs" criteria established to support field warrant delegation decisions under the Department of the Interior Contracting Officers Warrant System Manual dated February 1997. This document will help field offices and division administrative staff understand what requirements must generally be met to support a given warrant level if workload at a site does not, on its own, support a warrant. Before making an expenditure on training an individual for warrant qualification, please encourage your field offices to coordinate with you and with the Office of Program Support (OPS)-Office of Acquisition and Federal Assistance to assure the training is targeted to a level of warrant which the site may reasonably expect to have issued. Having someone trained in the basics of the acquisition process is certainly useful at every work site, and we do not want to discourage training for that purpose, but neither do we want to have someone pursue a level of training targeted at obtaining a warrant level at a given level without a high likelihood that it can be supported at their work site. The criteria were cooperatively developed as a result of commitments made at the March 1997 meeting on purchasing with OPS and senior division administrative personnel. I would like to thank Dianne Putnam (National Mapping Division), Dave Madril (Water Resources Division), Scott Tilley (Geologic Division) and John Caracciolo (Biological Resources Division) for their contributions in helping establish these initial criteria. As indicated in the document, the criteria will be updated from time-to-time, as necessary, to reflect the operational needs of the U.S. Geological Survey. Please do not hesitate to call me at extension 7373, at any time to suggest improvements/ revisions to these criteria. Attachment USGS OPS/Program Division Partnerships: Field Warranted Contracting Officers Delegations Cooperatively Developed "Local Service Needs" Criteria (in effect as of September 25, 1997): The Department of the Interior (DOI) Contracting Officers Warrant System Manual (dated February 1997) provides a number of criteria for delegating procurement authority to a field location including several related to the volume of workload processed or initiated at that location (including consideration of workload generated at subsidiary sites and processed by the location requesting a warrant). The manual also directs the bureau procurement chief to consider a number of other factors including "local service needs" in addition to workload volume in determining the appropriate level of warrant for the site. The "local services needs" criteria which we will utilize in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for Level IA ($5,000 open market/$100,000 established source), Level IB ($10,000/$100,000), and Level IIA ($25,000/$100,000) warrant requests are listed below. Division Administrative Officers (AO's) will work with the Chief, Office of Program Support (OPS)-Office of Acquisition and Federal Assistance (OAFA), if unusual needs not reflected by any of these criteria are identified. These criteria will be updated as operational necessity dictates. In requesting consideration of a warrant level based on any of the below criteria, a narrative explanation of the circumstances/conditions that exist at the location clearly demonstrating the applicability of one or more of these criteria is required. Simply citing the criteria text below in the warrant request does not, in itself, support consideration of the criteria: --The requesting office has responsibility for maintenance of their facility(ies). At such sites, the daily health and safety of employees as well as protecting the investment in their scientific projects is at stake, and they do not have a lessor to turn to make necessary repairs. In this case, a higher level warrant enables most facility repair items to be purchased for the staff dedicated to facilities maintenance, thus mitigating the chance that routine repair problems would escalate into emergencies. --The requesting office, while not otherwise generating open market workload volumes sustaining a delegation, does generate acquisition requirements that are submitted to the servicing OPS purchasing office and/or generates a number of interagency agreements that have to be signed by someone within the division or an OPS warranted Contracting Officer. In such cases, a need exists to retain someone on staff in the field with purchasing experience. This individual would remain current in training, etc., in order to provide consultation on the acquisition process to end-users, to act as a subject matter expert at the local level; and to provide liaison with servicing OPS primary purchasing office. (This criteria would support warranting an individual at the site either as a Level IA or Level IB Contracting Officer and is generally not available to be cited for field units which are subsidiaries of other field units having warranted authority.) --The USGS field location purchases unique or highly unusual items requiring face-to-face coordination with the scientists/technicians that develop the requirements documentation to facilitate their purchase. The face-to-face coordination on actions within their delegated procurement authority also provides the field Contracting Officer with skill and experience to provide liaison to purchasing/contracting personnel at the OPS procurement office supporting their facility when requirements exceed their warrant. The "local services need" based request would be supported by documenting what the unique requirements are and why they result in the need for face-to-face communication with the Contracting Officer. (This criteria applies to open market purchasing activities. Items available from mandatory sources of supply, General Services Administration schedules, and other agency contracts are by definition not unique or unusual.) --Consistent with DOI's preference for cross-servicing, where an administrative unit has been tasked to provide acquisition support for more than one USGS division component and/or another DOI component in order to reduce administrative resources required to support bureau/DOI programs, a higher level of warrant will be considered than might otherwise have been supported by workload volume alone. To further encourage cross-servicing, on a pilot project basis, we will support a limited number of cross-servicing agreements between field offices of multiple divisions (particularly where they are located within 20-30 miles of each other), and where the agreement seeks to minimize the overall number of warranted personnel at each site by providing back-up purchasing support for the other office rather than maintaining multiple warrants at each location. Division Administrative Officers are requested to assure that warrant requests are coordinated with OPS-OAFA when cross-servicing is involved to assure that the warrant issued authorizes the Contracting Officer to make cross-servicing awards. Note: In addition to the specific criteria above, changes in a field office's program(s) which would significantly increase current/recent past workload transaction counts in a given warrant level dollar range can be considered. Documented workload increase projections can be used to support a warrant request.