Stewardship Contracting Overview

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Stewardship Contracting Overview

• Marcus Kauffman, Resource Innovations
• October 30, 2007
• Upper McKenzie Community Center

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Topics

• What you told us
• About stewardship contracting
• Generic process
• Role of stewardship groups
• Clarifying questions

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Origins

• Community leaders, contractors, and agency
  frustrated with
• Unhealthy forests
• Stagnating rural communities
• Need for new tools experimentation
• Lack of proactive role for stakeholders

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What you told us

• Concerns
• No cutting of old growth
• Forest Service moves too slowly
• Hard to create local jobs
• Thinning needs to be clearly defined
• Effort needs to be sustainable

• Positive
• Interested and supportive of concept
• Lack of familiarity with concept
• Focus on restoration

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Stewardship Contracting

• Authorized until 2013 by section 323 of Public
  Law 108-7
• A suite of authorities
• Purpose
• Achieve land management goals for national
  forests and the public lands that meet local and
  rural community needs

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Stewardship Guidelines

• Restoration is the focus
• Revenue generation is secondary
• Does not replace timber sale program
• Receipts cant be used for planning and
  administration
• National programmatic monitoring required
• Project-level monitoring encouraged

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More Guidelines

• Open, local collaborative process
• Identify projects, goals, and end-results
• Comply with NEPA and forest plans
• Must be on NFS or BLM land
• Private land using the Wyden Amendment

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Authorities Explained

• Goods for services
• Retention of receipts
• Best value
• Designation by description
• Multi-year contracts

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Trading Goods for Services

• Service work and product removal in one contract
• Key benefits
• Allows product value to be applied to other
  resources
• More efficient (one contract)
• Fewer resource impacts via single entry
• Allows some projects to go forward that would not
  otherwise work

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Retention of Receipts

• When the value of products removed exceeds the
  cost of restoration service work
• Can be used on another stewardship project
• On-the-ground projects
• Project design specifications
• Process monitoring
• Contracted NEPA and sale preparation
• Can be used on private land using the Wyden
  Amendment

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Best Value Contracting

• Mandated to be used
• Can consider factors other than price
• Technical proposal, past performance
• Local economic benefit
• Invites more ideas from contractors

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Designation by description and prescription

• Exemption from rule of marking all trees to be
  cut
• Describes objectives of treatments as they relate
  to the end result
• Used for commercial and noncommercial material,
  but commercial material requires scaling
• Saves money in labor and paint

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Multi-year Contracts

• Enter into contracts for up to 10 years
• Provide incentive for local investment
• 10-year project underway in AZ
• Need to consider agency and contractor workforce
  and capacity limitations

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Project Level Multi-Party Monitoring

• Tool for adaptive management
• Partners could
• Identify questions, protocols, analyzes data, and
  report findings
• Appropriated funds and outside sources allowed
• Use of retained receipts for project-level data
  gathering not allowed

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Implementation Tools

• Integrated Resource Timber Contract (IRT-C)
• Integrated Resource Service Contract (IRS-C)
• Standard Service Contract
• Stewardship Agreement
• Wyden Amendment

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Generic Process

• Gauge level of community interest
• Identify goals and objectives
• Develop organizational structure
• Develop stewardship strategy
• Contract development
• Project implementation
• Project monitoring (pre and post)

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Role of Stewardship Groups

• Function
• Provide agency with recommendations
• Collaborate to address concerns and pursue
  opportunities
• Schedule
• Meet regularly for several years
• Outcomes
• Projects with support from a diverse array of
  interests
• Projects restore forests and watershed and
  provide benefit to local communities

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Goals and Objectives

• Identify and clarify goals and objectives
• Ecological
• Economic
• Social
• Administrative
• Decision Point-
• Stewardship Area Boundary

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Organizational Structure

• Membership, purpose, structure
• Decision-making method
• Identify and clarify the roles in the group
• Find the common ground
• Decision Points
• Decision making method
• Group norms
• Meeting schedule

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Develop Stewardship Strategy

• Identify
• Project schedule and timeline
• NEPA ready, off the shelf
• From scratch
• On forest/off forest/both
• Priority geographic areas
• Priority treatments types
• Authorities to be used

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Contract Development

• Structure contract(s) to achieve outcomes
• Review agency planning timelines
• Review workforce information
• Design best value criteria
• Develop initial offerings
• Decision points
• Contract size and bid items
• Best value criteria
• Local economic benefit

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Understanding the Workforce

• Need to know
• Capacity (interest, equipment, experience,
  limitations)
• Contract preferences (size, length, )
• Deal killers
• Preferences considered in contract
• Contactors interests represented

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Project Implementation

• Offer contract(s)
• Request proposals
• Award
• Begin work
• Track progress
• Conduct site visits

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Whats it good for?

• Complex land management problems requiring
  diverse participation
• Comprehensive, basin-wide forest and watershed
  restoration
• Providing a strong role for local and regional
  stakeholders
• Provides greater flexibility

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Whats hard about it?

• Steep learning curve
• Community and contractors
• Can take years to get results
• Lack of common ground
• Lack of control over external forces
• Downsizing and targets
• County Payments reauthorization