Changes in Warrant Criteria

Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 17:35:37 -0500
To: "AO - All Administrative Officers"<distribution
From: "Alice A. Sabatini" <aasabati
Subject: Changes in Warrant Criteria

This is the second attachment to the email just sent on Workload Criteria
for warrants.

To: "AO - All Administrative Officers"<distribution
From: "Alice A. Sabatini, Division Administrative Officer" <aasabati
Subject: Changes in Warrant Criteria
Cc: "Catherine L Hill, ACH/Operations, Reston, VA" <clhill,
        "Nancy J Hill, Chief, Mgmt Support Section, Reston, VA" <njhill

Attached is a memorandum from John Peterson, Chief of the Office of
Acquisition and Federal Assistance in the Office of Program Support (OPS)
that outlines specifics on one of the changes in the Department of the
Interior's Contracting Officer's Warrant Program.  A more thorough coverage
of the changes can be found on the OPS web page as is a copy of the new
warrant handbook.  Contracting Officer's should print a copy of the
handbook from the web page if they have not already done so.  

The local service needs criteria will be used to justify most of the new
warrant requests in WRD because our workload volumes in most cost centers
do not justify even one warrant per cost center under the new DOI warrant
program.  The Senior AOs and I will be deciding on whether to apply the new
warrant criteria to existing warrants in our November meeting.  If you have
strong feelings on this issue, please discuss it with your Senior AO prior
to that meeting.




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.


******************************************************************
* Alice A. Sabatini, Division Administrative Officer            *
* Water Resources Division, U.S. Geological Survey        *
* 442 National Center, 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive           *
* Reston, VA  20192  703-648-5027; fax 703-648-5295  *
******************************************************************