With the FAA control tower in the background, crews prepare helicopters at the Hopps Helibase for the day’s missions on large fires around Colville, WA August 25, 2015. Photo by Tom Story.With the expiration of contracts for firefighting helicopters looming, the US Forest Service began the lengthy process of issuing new contracts for 2022 on July 7, 2021 with the posting of a “presolicitation.” The new concept was based on a one year contract. The FS would have had the option at their discretion to extend it further in one year increments, up to 9 years for Call When Needed (CWN) helicopters and up to 4 years for Exclusive Use (EU) ships.
In addition to just a one year guarantee, there were new requirements for equipment to be added to the aircraft requiring significant additional expenditures for the private companies bidding on the services.
There are reports that some potential vendors were very unsatisfied with the changes. The FS contracting office posted more than a dozen versions of the presolicitation between July 7 and December 6.
Finally on December 13 they threw in the towel, saying, “The USFS has determined there is not enough time for an adequate response from industry, a complete evaluation by the government, and ultimately timely award prior to the start of 2022 mandatory availability periods.”
Here is the full text from the December 13 update:
The intent of the USFS for acquiring helicopter services for 2022 is as follows:
1. Basic Ordering Agreements (BOAs) for 28 – Type 1 helicopters having 120-day mandatory availability periods.
2. 6-month Exclusive Use (EU) contract extensions for 34 – Type 2 helicopters with contracts expiring in 2022, utilizing BOAs for remaining EU line items.
3. 6-month EU contract extensions for Type 3 helicopters with contracts expiring in 2022, utilizing BOAs for remaining EU line items.
4. The USFS will continue to review and refine the Multiple Award Task Order Contract (MATOC) solicitation. The USFS intends to make parent awards Summer/Fall 2022, with task orders being competed/awarded after parent awards.
The USFS has determined there is not enough time for an adequate response from industry, a complete evaluation by the government, and ultimately timely award prior to the start of 2022 mandatory availability periods.
The December 13 update did not mention CWN helicopters, so we asked USFS Fire Communications Specialist Stanton Florea about their status. He replied:
The existing Call When Needed (CWN) Basic Ordering Agreement (BOA) will be utilized for both Type 1 and Type 2 CWN helicopters. The BOA will be used as noted for both Exclusive Use (EU) and CWN Type 1 contracts in 2022. We will award the EU 28 120-day Mandatory Availability Period Type 1 contracts using the CWN BOA to fill the 28 EU line items.
Moving to 10-year contracts for firefighting aircraft was mentioned several times in an April 15 hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, featuring U.S. Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen and her testimony.
“One thing I’ve been dealing with,” Rep. Mike Simpson said, “are the aviation assets of the Forest Service… Are we going to have a clear outline for the next 10-year plan for what the Forest Service needs in terms of air assets? How the five and ten year contracts you’re looking at will affect us and benefit us and what we need to put into our budget to so that the Forest Service has the necessary equipment to address these wildfires?”
“We are studying the question about going to a 10-year contract, what the pros and cons are,” Chief Christiansen said.” We’re nearly complete with that report. It will be going through clearance in a matter of a few days and it will be getting to the committee here shortly. So we’d be glad to discuss more about air tankers. But we think we are really on the right track with our air tankers.”
In September an article on Fire Aviation about this current presolicitation included an opinion from the vendor of a Type 3 helicopter who requested to remain anonymous in order to avoid retribution from the agency. Here is an excerpt:
“This draft Request for Proposal is such a massive and violent change from what has been requested in previous contracts that most operators aren’t going to be able to handle it. We operate Type III helicopters and are now faced with 40+ pounds of equipment (costing over $60k per aircraft) to meet minimum requirements – things that we really don’t need like a Traffic Avoidance System (but the ADS-B they required last year isn’t good enough) and a loudspeaker (because yelling at the fire helps?). Oh, and don’t glance over the cockpit camera, which they want even on restricted category bucket ships. The cheapest camera we could find is $10,000. How’s about an STC for personal electronic devices, only available from one company, nobody else in the industry even knows what the hell the STC is or is for! But you better pay for it, USFS says!
“Once we get all of that figured out, turns out that the increase in performance specifications at 7,000′ / 30°C combined with the added equipment pretty much eliminates legacy ships from meeting performance requirements. They essentially want a Sky Crane to do a Jet Ranger’s job. A lot of the operators that will get pushed out because of this RFP do a lot of irrefutably safe work when fire season peaks, or when resource work is needed, with excellently maintained legacy platforms at great value to the taxpayers.”
Our take
Less than three months after Forest Service Chief Christiansen said the agency was going to release a report “shortly” about the feasibility of moving to 10-year contracts, they issued a presolicitation for helicopter contracts that guaranteed one year. (Fire Aviation has requested a copy of the report.)
In December, 2017 the US Forest Service cancelled a five-year EU contract it had issued the previous year for two CL-415 water scooping air tankers. So a one year contract with each additional option year at the discretion of the agency with unreliable congressional funding is not a concept that makes potential vendors feel all warm and fuzzy.
That year the FS also reduced the number of Type 1 helicopters on EU contract from 34 to 28 and cancelled a solicitation for up to seven large air tankers, citing a lack of funding.
In 2018 when the Forest Service began issuing one-year contracts for air tankers we wrote:
Few if any vendors can simply write a check to purchase and convert an air tanker, so they have to convince a lender to give them large sums of money usually even before they have a contract with the USFS. With this new one-year contract policy, obtaining those funds could be even more difficult.
Below is an excerpt from the Missoulian:
“They’re only offering a one-year contract,” said Ron Hooper, president of Missoula-based Neptune Aviation. “We can’t go to the bank with a one-year contract to finance airplanes. They just laugh at us.”
Even if a vendor received a guaranteed five-year contract it can be difficult to establish and implement a long-term business plan that would make sense to their banker and the solvency of the company.
These one-year firefighting aircraft contracts need to be converted to 10-year contracts, and the number of Type 1 helicopters must be restored to at least the 34 we had for years.
10 Comments
What a crock of crap! Just more bureaucratic nonsense,and incompetence form the USFS.
They almost seem to be writing rules to make the use of Firefighting Aircraft, impossible . Shame on them!!
Response from industry-leading? Puuuullleeeze…the Agency surely has gotten a response. Dont blame industry for adding on BS items like loudspeakers…FS wants it? PAY the vendor to include the STCs, FAA 337s, time the office folks have to catch up on the logbooks……Once again the Agency simply does not know what it takes to run a fleet of helicopters at the vendor level. Putting more undue pressure on vendors to meet their misunderstanding of both FW and RW aviation. Some of these folks need to spend 20+ yrs like some us did in the aviation maintenance and everyday flying to expend this much energy to get vendors spooled up and then say there is not enough time. Time management skills and Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance is not a skill this outfit excels in….time to get back to timber management and master THAT, if that’s possible before trying to re write contracts….maybe this outfit needs to hire some of us aviation professionals to assist the other professional mechanics and pilots on the USFS staff….surely they could assist in helping the contract office in being more realistic……
First off its not the contracting office that is being unrealistic. If you knew just one thing about contracting it may help. The Contracting office doesn’t make the requirements or evaluation criteria in the solicitation, that is the responsibility of the program office..PERIOD ! And just a side note, the CO in charge of the solicitation has pointed out these things that are unrealistic but gets told to shut up and color from the mucky mucks in DC…so please stop blaming Contracting and if you don’t have a clue about contracting it maybe you should take some time to learn a little about contracting
As a former FS aviator I can confidently say that every single FS Aviation Officer from the WO to the RO’s needs to be fired or reassigned. Over and again these career bureaucrats prove their aggressive pursuit of continued failure and abject ineptitude. From completely unacceptable accident rates to corrupt hiring decisions and horrendously abysmal contracting they are all utter and complete failures. Too busy feathering their own nests and grade-hopping they couldn’t care less about the program at large. It’s killing aviators, driving people from the agency and putting our only vendors/partners in impossible positions. Fire.every.last.one.of.them.
does this mean that this program,or whatever it is simply failed? (like everything they do) or does this mean there will be a shortage of helicopters available for fires?..
Huh. It’s playing out exactly like we (helitack crews who actually do the work and are face to face with the vendors every day) predicted at the beginning of this season. Imagine that. The Agency’s incompetence and self sabotage never fails to amaze. 5 more pack tests and I’m done.
That’s my Commo unit helibase pictured in the photo, and yes we were required to have a PA system to yell at the fire 😂😂
What year was this pic taken??
Along with Monitormonkey from above. Here’s an idea that probably nobody will like. How about awarding bid points to the bidders, which convert to costs paid by the organization hiring the aircraft, for those things that a joint committee feels may be “potential benefits” to the basic mission of air attack or supression missions. If the FS or DOI wants collision avoidance, fine but it’s gonna cost them. You want a loud hailer, fork it over. Such costs could be spread out over the period of the contract. On the contractor side, if you want to bid on a contract without those things, fine, lets see how important they really are for the mission by whether the FS still go for the low bid or walk the walk and share the expense of “upgrades”. On the other hand it seems in our world it is more important that “I’m not happy until you’re not happy” seems to rule.
I’m waiting for airbags…..oh no, wait, they have an explosive charge generator so you’ll need the whole hazmat approval, and track the squib date to have that particular safety device.
My sympathies lean towards the contractors who despite expending capital, training pilots and mechanics etc. have no assurance they will garner any sort of benefit for their effort. It is very different from putting out an RFQ for an item that a company bids on based on their own estimation of costs that will meet the specification, where nothing has yet been manufactured and nobody really knows what things will cost until they research the bid spec. Making low bid for a set of parameters the winner will always get you what you pay for, and as we’ve seen, sometimes a lot less. The FS requirements are out of synch with the financial obligations of the companies they want to hire.
BTW, does anyone flying on fires really need an ELT if they have ADSB? These devices have their place but has any downed firefighting aircraft actually been located by one? Cell phone gps location, sat phones and ADSB are far more useful. Let the folks who have ADSB be exempt from ELT burden. A nod to newer technology.
I would encourage folks to contact their Congressional Representatives (once again) about problems with government contracting for fire-fighting aircraft. I agree the process has become absurd; personnel within federal agencies who develop and oversee aircraft contracts for fire-fighting need significant redirection. That has to come from Congress to the FS and DOI Chiefs, and then down to them. It’s unimaginable that they have created a situation where it’s likely there will not be a sustainable source for fire aircraft. The idea of one year contracts is just one characteristic of a contracting process that lacks experience, maturity and common sense.
Senator Mark Kelly may be interested in hearing comments about FS & DOI aircraft contracting:
https://www.kelly.senate.gov/
I think many of us do understand the contracting world and the pages put out by the head shed. Being told to shut up and color indicates a less than collaborative environment and makes Gov employees who work for top down leadership, pretending to be the military. Many of us here may not see the inner workings of “The Office” but we surely do see the end product of some inept folks or folks in the contract office who may not have the fortitude of researching aviation subjects to inform their leadership. Give us folks in the field a little credit for the same credit you so richly deserve
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