Laura Dunning

Laura Dunning serves as a Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) for the USDA Forest Service, providing critical oversight of mission-critical contracts supporting forest health, wildfire mitigation, and operational resilience across remote federal lands. In this role, she ensures contractor performance aligns with agency objectives in ecological restoration, infrastructure maintenance, and emergency response readiness. Her procurement portfolio primarily encompasses professional services, technical support, and specialized labor contracts essential to sustaining field operations in challenging terrains. She works closely with contracting officers to evaluate deliverables, manage performance metrics, and enforce compliance with federal acquisition regulations, playing a pivotal role in translating operational needs into effective, accountable acquisitions. Ms. Dunning maintains consistent working relationships with a select group of contractors including ACI FEDERAL INC, ONE STOP RECRUITING LLC, GONDO ROY E MD, THE LOCUMS CO, LLC, and AMD INTERNATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES LLC. These partnerships reflect a focus on niche service providers delivering specialized labor, recruitment support for technical and medical personnel, and IT infrastructure services tailored to remote forest service operations. Her engagement patterns suggest a preference for vendors with proven experience in federal environmental and emergency response environments, often requiring rapid mobilization and compliance with stringent safety and security protocols. While no formal set-aside data is available, her contractor base includes firms with expertise in staffing and technical services that often qualify as small businesses, suggesting an implicit alignment with socioeconomic contracting goals. Her procurement patterns indicate a practical emphasis on capability and readiness over formal set-aside designations, with a clear preference for vendors who can deliver mission-critical support under time-sensitive conditions. Her primary procurement focus lies in NAICS categories related to professional, scientific, and technical services—particularly human capital support, emergency medical services, and IT systems integration for field operations. She routinely acquires services that sustain workforce continuity, enhance digital reporting capabilities, and support ecological monitoring systems in isolated regions, demonstrating deep domain expertise in operational logistics for federal land management.