Derrick Thomas

Derrick Thomas serves as a key procurement lead within the Stewardship Contracting Branch of the U.S. Forest Service, managing complex, landscape-scale stewardship contracts designed to advance ecological restoration and wildfire risk reduction. His work directly supports the agency’s mission of integrating timber harvesting with watershed protection, habitat improvement, and infrastructure maintenance across national forests. Thomas specializes in negotiating and administering multi-objective contracts that combine resource extraction with ecological outcomes, ensuring compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act. He routinely handles acquisitions under the Stewardship Contracting Authority, which enables long-term, performance-based partnerships to achieve sustainable forest management goals. Thomas maintains consistent working relationships with a core group of specialized contractors, including Brink Brothers Inc., Peak Engineering LLC, AZ Hammer Down, LLC, Gabino D. Grano, and Gladhart LLC. These firms are selected for their demonstrated expertise in forest thinning, fuels reduction, road maintenance, and ecological restoration services. His procurement approach favors contractors with proven field experience in remote, ecologically sensitive environments, emphasizing safety, regulatory compliance, and adaptive management practices. Collaborative, long-term partnerships are central to his strategy, enabling continuity in project execution and shared accountability for ecological outcomes. Thomas exhibits a strict and consistent commitment to small business participation, directing 100% of his acquisitions toward total small business set-asides under FAR 19.5. He prioritizes contracting with small businesses capable of delivering specialized forestry support services, ensuring broad economic opportunity within rural and forest-dependent communities. His procurement patterns reflect a deliberate effort to build capacity among small, locally rooted firms with technical expertise in forest operations. His procurement focus is exclusively centered on NAICS 115310—Support Activities for Forestry—encompassing activities such as brush clearing, snag removal, prescribed burning support, and forest road construction and maintenance. He does not procure timber sales as standalone transactions but integrates them within broader stewardship contracts that require ecological restoration deliverables, demonstrating deep technical expertise in performance-based forest management contracting.