USDA Forest Service Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) Industry Day Notice

DESCRIPTION

The US Forest Service will be hosting a virtual Industry Day event on May 20th, 2021. It will begin at 1200 P.M. Eastern; 1100 A.M. Central; 1000 A .M. Mountain; 0900 A.M. Pacific; 0800 A.M. Alaska . The Government is interested in providing industry with information on projects focused on reducing the backlog of deferred maintenance which includes Supplies, Services, Construction and Architecture/Engineering contract actions. There will be 4 breakout sessions addressing these categories of actions immediately following the initial presentation session.

BACKGROUND

The Great American Outdoors Act of 2020 (GAOA), P.L. 116 152 , provides the Forest Service (FS) a maximum of $285 million per year from the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund (LRF) for fiscal years 2021 through 2025.

GAOA LRF will allow the Forest Service to address its critical $5.9 B. deferred maintenance backlog. The funding provided by GAOA LRF will help us meet some of our greatest deferred maintenance needs on National Forests and Grasslands and achieve demonstrable improvements in both transportation and recreation infrastructure. The FS infrastructure portfolio includes a variety of capital assets including approximat ely 39,000 buildings, 1,700 dams and reservoirs , 32,900 recreation sites, 6,600 road bridges, 370,000 miles of roads, 7,100 trail bridges and 158,800 miles of trails. In FY 2020 the FS had $5.9 billion in identified DM needs.

For the first year of LRF funding, the Forest Service identified a broad mix of critical infrastructure projects to reduce its deferred maintenance backlog while improving the quality of the visitor experience and contributing to local economies. A total of 556 LRF projects have been authorized by Congress to begin implementation in FY21. T he Forest Service created a public web site where information in regards to projects that are anticipated to be accomplished with GAOA funds. The site can be accessed here: https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/gaoa

VIRTUAL INFORMATION SESSION DETAILS

USFS intends to host a virtual vendor information session Thursday, May 20th to provide additional background information regarding procurements and projects related to the Great American Outdoors Act. Please note: this is a general information session; discussion will be limited general GAOA projects only. Specific solicitations that have been issued or other unrelated projects will not be addressed.

Vendors who would like to attend this information session or submit questions for consideration must RSVP via the survey referenced below and included in the attached flyer no later than Monday, May 17th by 5pm EST.

• Questions for the Q&A session may be submitted via e-mail to Michael.L.Johnson@USDA.GOV.
• Solicitation/procurement specific questions will not be taken during the information session.

The virtual Industry Day will be accomplished utilizing the Microsoft TEAMS Live Event platform and will consist of 2 sections.

Section 1: Begins promptly at 1200 Eastern through MS Teams Live Event with presentations by Department of Agriculture and Forest Service Leadership. Before entering into the breakout sessions, questions submitted that aren't specific to a breakout session topic will be answered. Connect to the Live Event through this link or copy and paste the following into your web browser.

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ZTQ2ZWVmNGQtOWQxZi00YjA4LWIzODMtMzlmN2I2MTg5MjBj%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22ed5b36e7-01ee-4ebc-867e-e03cfa0d4697%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22572dd7a2-d719-482e-96b2-dea3ec161ece%22%2c%22IsBroadcastMeeting%22%3atrue%7d

Section 2: Breakout Sessions. There will be 4 separate breakouts being accomplished simultaneously, each focused on specific types of actions for Supplies, Services, Construction and Architect/Engineering. Links to these sessions will be posted to the chat area of the Live Event. These sessions will be co-facilitated by a Technical and Procurement leader.

Attendance at this event is not required to submit responses to synopsis or solicitation of GAOA projects.

To RSVP, please copy the following URL and past it into your web browser or click the link for the survey in the attached flyer.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=5zZb7e4BvE6GfuA8-g1GlwR4RI8il3pFkkuQUgbV3T1UNlc0SDdUVFo5UzVOU0JJNzU2QUhISDVDWC4u