John Gomez

John Gomez serves as a key procurement lead within the Stewardship Contracting Branch of the U.S. Forest Service, where he facilitates landscape-scale ecological restoration contracts aligned with the agency’s mission of sustainable forest management. He specializes in managing complex, performance-based acquisitions that integrate timber harvesting with watershed protection, wildfire risk reduction, and infrastructure maintenance. His work ensures that contracting activities directly support the Forest Service’s strategic goals of ecosystem resilience and collaborative resource stewardship, often coordinating with multiple stakeholders to deliver multi-objective outcomes under statutory authorities such as the Stewardship Contracting Authority. Gomez maintains consistent working relationships with a core group of experienced contractors including Brink Brothers Inc., Peak Engineering LLC, Miller Timber Services, Inc., AZ Hammer Down, LLC, and Dennis Kirby. These partnerships are characterized by long-term engagement in ecological restoration projects requiring specialized forestry expertise, heavy equipment operation, and site-specific engineering solutions. His procurement approach favors contractors with proven track records in implementing science-based forest treatments, fostering reliability and operational continuity across multi-year initiatives. Gomez’s contracting portfolio reflects a strong preference for open competition, with 100% of awards issued under no set-aside categories. This reflects the technical complexity and scale of stewardship projects, which often require specialized capabilities not broadly available among small businesses, while still maintaining compliance with federal acquisition regulations. Although socioeconomic set-asides are not utilized, his process prioritizes fair and transparent competition among qualified vendors with demonstrated capacity in forest restoration. His primary procurement focus is exclusively on NAICS 115310 — Support Activities for Forestry — encompassing services such as fuels reduction, trail and road maintenance, invasive species control, and forest thinning. He procures technical services requiring field expertise in silviculture, ecological monitoring, and compliance with NEPA and Endangered Species Act requirements, demonstrating deep domain knowledge in operational forestry and ecosystem-based resource management.