Natural Gas Partners for Consumption and Purchase Management

The United States Postal Service (USPS) is inviting interested suppliers to provide technical support and oversight of its natural gas acquisition and contracting process in regulated and deregulated natural gas markets. The scope of this contract includes managing the solicitation and award process for approximately 5,800 accounts of which 2,200 are under existing third party commodity and basis transportation agreements. Services under this RFI include developing a natural gas acquisition and marketing analysis/strategy to verify eligibility requirements and identify contracting opportunities, compilation, analysis and maintenance of facility, account and utility consumption data, leveraging and aggregation of consumption requirements, pre-qualification of suppliers, conducting natural gas reverse auction, managing utility transition and enrollment process, providing full time contract/account management support, providing bill payment and analysis support for tax recovery, billing error correction, rate optimization and tariff analysis for lowest aggregate commodity, transportation and distribution costs. The supplier must have experience in the management of a turn key end to end acquisition and cost management process for reducing natural gas consumption/price and maximizing sustainability opportunities. All Suppliers with experience with this type of integrated approach are encouraged to participate in this RFI. In FY2012, total aggregate annual natural gas spend was approximately $64,000,000. This Request for Information (RFI) is issued to assist the United States Postal Service (USPS) to better understand and identify suppliers in the marketplace meeting these requirements with a proven history of performance, with an integrated successfully deployed strategy that meets the needs of commercial and government organizations and to better evaluate how these strategies will support USPS Consumption and Purchase Management requirements. The supplier acknowledges that confidential information might be generated or made available during this Request for Information (RFI) process. In addition to the restriction on disclosure established under the supplier's code of ethics, the supplier specifically agrees not to disclose any information received or generated under this RFI unless its release is approved in writing by the Contracting Officer. The supplier further agrees to assert any privileges allowed by law to defend vigorously the United States Postal Service rights to confidentiality. The information included in this Request for Information (RFI) will be evaluated by the United States Postal Service Purchase Team to determine the feasibility and strategies proposed to achieve its goals. Submission to this RFI shall include: 1) Basic information on company; size, years in business, relevant experience, with customer references and Client List; 2) Suggested methodology/technical approach to manage USPS natural gas requirements on a national basis 3) Overview of it's reverse auction platform and other marketing and contracting strategies offered 4) Describe 3rd party billing and payment services; 5) Provide the type(s) of incentives needed to reduce real cost by 7% - 15% per year and how you would approach this challenge and 6) Basic financial statement. Include an executive summary on your ability to Manage Consumption and Purchase requirements of Natural Gas including budget cost. Provide examples of similar contracts in the past five (5) years and provide client references for these projects. The complete submission package should not exceed 35 pages. Submit (1) original and (3) copies and one (1) CD electronic copy. All questions concerning this solicitation shall be directed in writing in MSWord format to Michael Bacha at michael.j.bacha2@usps.gov. Proposals are due on August 17, 2012 by 3:00 pm EST and should be hand delivered or mailed (using one of the services offered by the Postal Service) to the attention of Michael Bacha, SMFP, USPS Headquarters, Room 1306, Washington DC 20260-6201.