NOTICE OF INTENT TO AWARD A SOLE-SOURCE CONTRACT

THIS IS A NOTICE OF INTENT TO AWARD A SOLE-SOURCE CONTRACT AND IS NOT A REQUEST FOR COMPETITIVE PROPOSALS.

The intent of this Special Notice is for informational purposes only. The United States Department of Agriculture/Forest Service (USDA/FS) Procurement and Property Services (PPS), Incident Procurement Operations (IPO), Logistics Contracting Branch ( LCB) intends to award a commercial, sole source, Requirements contract to Fortress North America a Compass Minerals Company for supply of aerial Long-Term Fire Retardant (LTFR) product and ancillary support at designated Airtanker base (ATB) locations, for the purpose of an Operation Field Evaluation (OFE) on their conditional/interim qualified aerial LTFR product for testing purposes during Wildland Firefighting efforts. The aerial LTFR product required and supplied must be conditional/interim qualified on the Qualified Products List (QPL) in accordance with USDA, USFS Specification 5100-304d (or latest revision) - Long Term Retardant, Wildland Firefighting with amendments.

The statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition is 41 U.S.C. 3304(a)(1), as implemented by FAR 6.302-1, titled "Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements."

This notice of intent is NOT a request for proposals or quotes; however, all responsible sources, meeting the agency’s requirement including meeting the conditional/interim qualification in the USDA FS implemented Specification 5100-304d (or latest version) for Long-Term Retardant, Wildland Firefighting may request and be furnished the solicitation and additional information, upon their request. Interested parties meeting the qualification requirements, may submit a quotation and technical capabilities, which, if received within 10 calendar days of publication of this notice shall be considered by the Government. All responses must be submitted to the Government primary point of contact at the contracting office address shown below. If no written responses are received after the publication of this notice the contract will be awarded without further notice. A determination by the Government not to open the requirement to competition based upon the responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government.