Notice of Intent to Increase IDIQ Contract Ceiling

The USDA Forest Service, Region 10 Acquisition Management intends to increase the ceiling of contract number 12010919D0012 with ECI/Hyer Inc., located at 3909 Arctic Blvd Ste. 103, Anchorage AK 99503. The contract is an indefinite delivery/indefinite quanity (IDIQ) contract for professional architect-engineering services related to development of the Mendenhall Glacier Master Plan. This increase is necessary to account for the following reason(s): 1. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Processes. The contract specifically includes NEPA for the associated design work as the two are inextricably linked together. The initial contract value was based on an intent to utilize an Environmental Assessment (EA). Due to the process involved with Environmental Analysis and Decision Making (EADM), initiatives have shown that impacts are likely to be significant, requiring the use of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) instead of an EA. Under authority of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Regulations 40 C.F.R. 1501.4(c), the Government needs to switch the ongoing process from an EA to an EIS, which results in an increase to the timeline, the amount of work involved and an increase in the cost of that work. 2. Logical Follow On for Continued Development . A task order was awarded against the IDIQ contract on 11/19/2019 for the Contractor to provide NEPA analysis at the EA level. The ongoing nature of the work does not have a finalized or concise deliverable to transfer EA work over to another entity to start the EIS work. Due to this reality, any change to the contractor performing these services would require substantial duplication of effort for a new contractor to familiarize themselves with the processes, relationships, non-NEPA related work products, and perform already inprogress EA efforts rendered by the current contractor. Under authority of 41 U.S.C. 3304 (a)(1), the Government does not expect to recover the value of the duplicated effort through the results of a competition. Further, due to upcoming changes to the CEQ regulations, the amount of time required to compete this action would run into conflicts with the time required to implement the changes at the Department level, followed by the Bureau level. Since changing rules is a time-consuming effort, and the amount of rules requiring changes is currently unknown, competing this as a separate action would not only result in a substantial duplication of effort, it would result in unacceptable delays to the NEPA process. 3. The contract ceiling will be raised from $4,200,000 to $4,900,000 to cover increased costs associated with the change from an EA to an EIS within scope of the NEPA work described in the IDIQ contract. This notice of intent to increase the contract ceiling is not a request for competitive proposals. Any responses to this notice must show clear and convincing evidence that competition of the work would be advantageous to the government. There will be no solicitation available for competitive proposals.