Sign Idaho Electrical Services Contract Now

Document type sign electrical services contract idaho now

good morning everyone and welcome to our ninth supplier engagement series webinar um i'm stacy francis i'm the small business program manager here at the idaho national laboratory and i'm your host for today's webinar we have a great presentation today and next month on march 10th i'm very excited to introduce our new laboratory director john wagner to you john will be joined by deputy lab directors marianne wallach and john alvarez or juan alvarez you won't want to miss this one so you can register at procurement.inl.gov and that registration is open now before i introduce our speaker for today i want to remind you that if you have any questions during the presentation please add it to the questions tab and we will be addressing those questions as we go through the webinar if i can answer them and if not elise will address those at the end of the webinar we will also be posting the presentation and a recording of the webinar this afternoon on the procurement.inl.gov website so check back there if you want to take another look at it um we are excited to have so many people in attendance with us today as we demystify service contracts at the idaho national laboratory and elise miller is just the person to do that for us it's my pleasure to at least to introduce elise to you today um elise is our service acquisition manager and elise has been at the lab for about 10 years and she cut her teeth in the service contract world elise oversaw some of our largest subcontracts during her tenure as a contract specialist and learned all things about nuclear fuel fabrication nuclear non proliferation university research contracts as well as many others elise is a proud badger having graduated from the university of wisconsin in madison and so with that elise i will turn it over to you awesome thank you stacy i'm excited to be here talking to you about service subcontracts um the goal here is demystifying service of contracts so helping you to understand um all the different scope of service of contracts that we do here at the lab and try to address it a little bit from a vendor's perspective so what opportunities there are how you i can can take advantage of those opportunities and a little understanding of our process and what we're doing so that'll get started so what are service subcontracts um we we really cover any subcontract that is not for materials and i gave a list here of some examples but it's pretty comprehensive what we do and so this list is by no means covering everything that we we cover i try to hit some of the big items uh construction is is considered a service of contract um anything engineering related engineered items fabricated items actual engineering services like civil engineering nuclear engineering electrical engineering fire safety protection services things like that staff augmentation so anything from im through administrative services anything in between honestly anywhere you might see a staff augmentation service professional services is probably one of our broadest categories uh anything from consulting to information management project management uh those providing their expertise whether that be on the nuclear engineering side um the energy and environmental side but soliciting experts in the fields around the country and around the world research contracts anything to help support the research ongoing at the lab we also cover licensing and software so product and implementation of the both of those so we purchase software which in some ways is a material that we do cover software under services and then associated implementations with large software projects all the university research and related contracts for those are covered under service of contracts infrastructure support so you're talking your snow snow removal maintaining the lawns and landscaping cafeteria services janitorial services maintenance services um anything in the training world whether that be in fact i'm working on my sexual harassment training this morning so that sort of a training to specific um training for machines and equipment and everything in between any training we provide through subcontract subscriptions services leases these are just some examples uh we have some more examples later i'll talk about um but service subcontracts is a really broad category it's a lot of different things um so basically if it's not a material and we're going out to get something it falls in our groups just to give you a sense um just a little bit of how much we do the service volume through the lab is huge this just shows the past decade you can see there's been steady growth there's a bit it was a bit of a dip um around when the market crashed um you know several years ago um but steady incline and services that we're soliciting millions and millions of dollars that we go out and get subcontract services for this just shows a graphic of all the different nakes codes that we get services through subcontract for i know it's really small but i'll kind of go through a few of them um the first category is all other professional scientific and technical so that's sort of our catch-all mix code we have a lot of services that don't fall in a specific category um so a lot of them just get put in that all other professional scientific and technical and and when i go over some of the more specific services later i can get a little into what that might include um but you'll see that's our largest category in this one it's 230 million there on the next educational support services um so anything relating to education and research university contracts after that that is construction we have a very large volume of construction contracts followed by engineering services whether that be providing engineering support for facilities or engineering related to research engineering uh lessons in non-residential buildings research and development in engineering just see if i can find another there's a bunch of computer about midway down for 60 million in two different categories you have custom computer programming and other computer related services a lot of information management and program development for the programs specific to research uh there's real estate computer facilities telecommunications and we have administrative on their analytical laboratory manufacturing remediation services uh it again just gives a sense of the broad scope of service of contracts that we do and also the large volume that the lab is doing in service subcontracts so to better provide a sense of what we do this is just an example of some of the service of contracts we do i tried to pick a broad range of types of service subcontracts while also um you know trying to get more specific not just high level some of the specific but also broad range things that we do again these are just examples our group um the group that i specifically oversee in service acquisitions has 26 contract specialists that are managing several hundred contracts so this is just you know tip of the iceberg for the types of service of contracts we do but hopefully it'll provide at least some scope of what kinds of services we might be looking for um i'll just run through some of them so education and training like i said before we do a lot of training through our service subcontracts and that is broad range as well you know we have public speaking training specific content training for you know technical services computer training it can cover any of that and then related education programs as well we do resource resource efficiency programs and those are energy and environmental so you know addressing resource efficiency 3d printing and modeling so anything related to those mobile power station strategic advisory and review committees these are across the lab and cover various programs so you may see for example um a review committee on geotechnical services or review committee on nuclear or something related to ans it depends they're all over um that's an example of some of the services we have um programmatic strategy support so developing and building strategy video services computer programming one a unique one that we have is really relation support with native communities um i mentioned staff hog support earlier we have another slide on staff support so i'll talk about that a little bit same with engineered items fabrication construction those are really large categories that that we frequently use infrastructure support so i talked earlier about all those different types of infrastructure support to help our laboratory run engineering you know we're an engineering laboratory so anything from nuclear engineering and on the research side to support engineering like drafting uh civil engineering those types of engineering mechanical uh a lot of the subcontracts we use are in expert consul consultation uh specific to projects for example for the vtr we will solicit those that have experience across the nation in vtr related um technologies and so engaging them to help us with our research that's just an example same in the energy and environment world as well we solicit tech support software installation licensing lots of things related to in our information management department support related to that maintenance maintenance from i've already talked about infrastructure support maintenance but additionally maintenance for a lot of the high-tech equipment and machinery we have at the laboratory fleet maintenance so a broad range of maintenance categories there we solicit foreign travel support so back when we were allowed to travel um you know helping us travel internationally getting visas things like that hazardous transportation and route surveys we do a lot of moving of hazardous materials and still planning route surveys and planning those those transportations same with the casks related to maybe those movements of all fallen service of contracts sample analysis sending samples off to different laboratories around the country um drilling seismic geotechnical analyses anything in those arenas as well we've done executive coaching equipment rental um specific specific facility support as i mentioned maintenance before same kind of thing we have specific support for those facilities that's necessary and so obtaining that specific support and then another huge broad ranging category is university support you know we're constantly doing research and engaging the university community under service of contract so how do we do service of contracts this just runs through our process it's a very high level um we may or may not do the first step it talks about doing an expression of interest on what was formally formerly known as fedbizops um we don't do that all the time um expressions of interest are generally used if we are unsure of the capabilities out in the vendor community or unsure of specifically how we're going to pursue a project a lot are often done on larger contracts um to get a better sense of the market and better understand who the players are and and what potential avenues we may want to pursue in our subcontract um so that's not always done um but it is a potential step so there's a place to look there uh internally what happens is the the technical or program identify a need for a subcontract you know they they realize they have something that they need done they cannot do themselves for whatever reason um and you saw we have a broad range of types of contracts so it really varies on to why they may be pursuing that maybe it's a niche expertise that they're looking for and it could be that like in staphon that we're overwhelmed with something and we need to support additional services um so it depends you know on where the the request is coming from in terms of why we are getting those requests but those requests are generated through the technical and program personnel that identify this need and then they submit those to us and they're submitted and approved those requests that we get may or may not identify a vendor with them um i mentioned in the next bullet point down there's a lot of things that may be applicable in terms of if they're identifying a vendor we have for example the simplified acquisition threshold award to small businesses so anytime if they have identified a small business for services they can do so without a competition there's other small business thresholds as well your hubzone your 8a all those statistics you can speak to those more if you have questions on those um we have others with specific doe agreements or they may have a non-competitive justification which indicates that there's only one vendor capable of doing a service um so they may come to us with a vendor identified if they do it like i said if they determine it's non-competitive they there's a process by which they they justify that they've done market research and no one else can perform that service um they may come with several vendors they may say we're pursuing an engineering service these are five vendors we're aware of uh and and then we have those as a pool to solicit from or they may not know who they want to go to they may not be aware of who can do that so we get all of that range from i know exactly who needs to do this too i have no idea uh and if they don't know then that comes to us and i have another slide on that how do we select our vendors um but then that if that comes to our shop where they don't know we we work on market research and with our small business program manager stacey to identify you know who may be able to provide those services after we identify the vendor or vendors we would send out an rfp a request for proposal um to to get a proposal on the services that we are soliciting specific to a scope of work that we would send out those are then evaluated either um there's a lot of bases on which we we evaluate those whether that be low-cost um technically acceptable um we may do a best value there's a lot of methods for evaluating those proposals and then when we negotiate the contract it's awarded and managed by service acquisitions so the folks in my group and then when it's completed we do a final vendor evaluation um stacey can speak a little more to that as well um but there's a default so most most contracts fall into the default that it's unacceptable everyone did great um but there is an evaluation following the contract so how do we select a vendor um like i said before we do sometimes utilize expressions of interest um to identify those interested vendors it is less common it tends to be for larger projects especially those with very unique capabilities that we're looking for to identify who are the players in that um so sometimes we'll identify vendors through that method we may do requests for information those are not solicited through uh the beta.sam.gov or fedbizops those are directly through our department and through our with our technical programs to find out who the interested vendors are it's basically a direct defender market research program a way of our obtaining who's capable what are your capabilities will they work for us to determine who our veteran pool may be for a specific acquisition um we do market research and that can be performed both by the program and or by us uh it just varies and depends um we we do rely on our technical to support with that that market research uh given the broad range of what we cover and our our expertise is in contracts right not in in their technical specific area and so we do rely on them to help us determine um you know the the qualifications at least of those that we're researching but we may be helping them identify some potential vendors uh bid lists are approved through our small business program manager um so she also helps in the selection of editors that stacy francis um and then we do have a non-competitive basis uh it's it's not ideal we try to maximize competition um but there are arenas where that happens um i mentioned here it's especially supported for for niche areas research for example university contracts are done on a non-competitive basis the way that i think about the way that it functions um a researcher is developing a relationship with a university researcher and together they determine hey this is a rese rch project we could do so we can't solicit that they're they're both very unique in their expertise and so the nature of it does not lend to competition um and that's very specific most of our other services you know are don't have those same unique components to them right if we're looking for a civil engineer unless we can identify there's a very particular reason it has to be one person there's a lot of civil engineers that we can solicit for that so um we try to focus on competition when we can there are unique circumstances where that may not be able to happen um we also have the simplified acquisition threshold which um it's considered competitive so we can solicit a small business vendor for smaller contracts then we do not have to go through the the same selection process so we may do that um but again you know our we get optimization through competition so it's our goal to pursue competition um when possible and i already mentioned this but we do focus on small business we have a lot of latitude through doe to award to small businesses and we also um it's part of our metrics and goals to award to small businesses so it's definitely a large a big um goal of ours to try and focus on that small business support um so we do encourage large large businesses to partner with small businesses um if they're looking to do work at the lab it's it's definitely an avenue that's that's more open so just to follow up on that how are we selecting vendors how based on that how can a vendor start to work for inl um you know it can seem a little intimidating and nebulous and broad ranging and so how do you as a vendor start to develop that relationship and get to work for inl um there isn't a magic ticket to doing so unfortunately i can't tell you oh just do this and and you'll be in um but some ideas it really comes down to networking to getting your product business right your the services you provide known um and it's not just to one individual or one group um so the first you know acquisitions um let's say that you're a fab shop you know getting to know the the specific contracts folks in my department that do fabrications will help then they're aware that you're a business that is available should we have that need arise um i think i i do have people reach out to me and and that's great and that's fine but being trying to be more specific about your your scope and what what your business does helps um because i said i i don't work fab contracts um but i know who does and so i can provide that to them and then they can know you know here are some vendors that that if we need a pool of vendors i can solicit and then also stacy in our small business program um you know building that relationship so she's aware of the services you provide then if our folks come to her and say hey i'm looking for this business this type of work she's aware of what's available as well um you can also network through those small business fairs and opportunities i don't think we're having those as much right now but it's a great way to find out what work is being done and also make sure that we are aware of what you provide um but also i think networking through the technicals and the programs is really important a lot like i said a lot of our requests come directly from our technicals to go to particular businesses whether they identify one or several they're aware of who out in the community can provide those services so making your services known to the technical community is really important whether that's through conferences fairs other events networking with the technicals directly on other you know if you're doing other projects with them other other things um especially in the like the unique expertise areas um you know identifying yourself as a potential option to them and then with other vendors i think it's important to to network with other vendors you know if you're a large business and you're looking at getting into something like engineering um it's great to partner with a small business because then you have the ability to provide that small business more tools and resources um but it's also an easier avenue for us for contracting through small business so um networking with with businesses that are already working for inl or that that may be able to complement your business i think is another great way to look at starting to work for the inl okay so i wanted to talk about just a few types of subcontracted work so first the types and then i'll focus on a couple of those types um we have three types of subcontracted service work the the first is staff augmentation fairly limited use this is specific to supplement work that bea or inl is doing so if we have staff that do that type of work then it's staff augmentation work we do this across the lab it's it's not extensive i mean it's not the largest portion of our subcontract work but it is very broad ranging anything from administrative work we use them in communications information management um in engineering um from uh like engineering crafts all the way to engineering research so we use them everywhere all through the lab but again it's not is kind of a limited use we have pretty strict policies on our staff augmentation and i'll get to that in a minute um we also have what's called manage services um which where we subcontract an entire function out so for example our cafeteria services are subcontracted um those run usually for several years so but they are competed so if you're interested in those types of services it's great to reach out to find out you know when those may be re-bid cafeteria janitorial our it support like our help desk if you will for it so all those types of services we consider managed services and then the big chunk which is really most of our contracts is the task based subcontracts and those are the examples i provided earlier it is the majority of what we do the tasks are defined right so um whether that be a specific research project that when it's complete it's done um maybe it's sample analysis you know analyze these samples uh repair this particular machine um i don't know participate on a review committee but they're disagree right the description of the scope of work is very discreet here's the job you complete it and then we we pay you or you know we may pay you ongoing but um most of our contracts fall into that area it's vendor directed specific scope and that's probably i don't know 80 or more of the service of contracts that we do so i wanted to talk about three specific types of those services those tasks based uh services um i think that these are three common ones that we get questions about so i wanted to address them specifically um they're they're not i said we have this huge range of contracts that we do in different types of uh scopes and activities but there's three that kind of always stand out so i wanted to just touch on those briefly and the first engineering services so uh and i didn't list it here but what i'm specifically talking about is drafting civil mechanical but we also have uh engineering related to engineering researchers so the more um specific like nuclear engineering and a little higher specificity to research being occurring um we usually compute these through rfps especially the drafting civil civil mechanical type services um there's small business focus there's lots of partnering opportunities here we also have engineered items and fabricated items specific to this is is having those quality levels so we have four quality levels at the inl and the engineered items and fabricated items um generally have some scope within quality so we i just listed here for information so for example we have nuclear grade ql1 in order to even really you don't have to be on our qsl which is qualified supplier list um to to get solicited for ql1 work um but you have to demonstrate that you have an nqa1 program that could qualify for our qualified supplier list so um if you're interested in that kind of work you know ensuring that you have those programs and that you could compete for those we also have a commercial grade dedication we we don't generally do use this one for engineered items we do ql3 we tend to have a stable of vendors that we solicit that have prior inl experience um so if you're interested in that kind of work um you know it's not unavailable but that's really developing those relationships with the contract specialist so they're aware of other shops that may be able to provide that type of service um and then ql4 so there's no qa that's non-quality and we're much more open on that based on you know what our needs are but we're more open on competition if it's not quality there's a note here just that um you know our the higher the quality grade the more particular we are in terms of who we're soliciting in terms of known versus unknown vendors just because there's uh very little tolerance for error with with quality so another specific service is construction i'm not going to talk about construction a lot i know there was a webinar in construction last month um so i think if you're interested in construction i would recommend that you review that um or you know we reach out to stacy we can help connect you with the right people to talk about construction uh it's a very specific area within services i just wanted to mention it is subject to site stabilization agreement which is a construction site labor agreement if you want more information there's a website provided here that you can take a look at and then work in idaho falls at the inl site is subject to the davis-bacon act so that's wages and fringe benefits requirements um so if you're interested in that information please take a look at those reach out to us if you have more questions on construction we have others that that can provide you a little more detail on working in construction at inl and then the third specific service i wanted to talk about was staff augmentation we did talk about staff augmentation a little bit before um again it's used across the lab for a variety of services where we need have a need that we need to fill that typically would be filled by an inl employee that for whatever reason we cannot fill that by an employment option um i talked about it before we use it for an array of services um you know it's really anything that we might do at the lab we we may use for staff augmentation uh we are redoing our staff augmentation policies procedures um just everything in general so staff augmentation's a little bit up in the air with inl right now um we already have several vendors that we utilize um and so if staff augmentation is your specialty i mean it's it's not um that we couldn't utilize additional services but we're we're in the process of redoing some of our processes and and looking into how we're doing that and part of that will be creating a like sort of a certified vendor pool so we only are soliciting specific vendors um that we know can can meet those things that we have identified in our policies procedures um so that that's developing it's underway i don't have a lot of great answers for that right now um you know but we can make note if that's something that you're interested in um we're trying to reduce our emphasis on staff augmentation there's a lot of risk to the lab if staff augmentation is not managed appropriately staff augmentation employees are basically inl employees in the eyes of the department of labor and irs and so we're trying to better address how we handle those relationships um but i'm happy to discuss that more with someone if you have questions on staff augmentation [Music] so how do you get started with inl um cc can go into a little more detail on this but i'll just run through it briefly uh if you if you're interested in working with inl there's a few steps you can go ahead and take right away um even before you you know i talked about the networking and getting yourself known and trying to work with technicals and contract specialists and stacy and small business and before even doing all that getting your done in bradstreet um getting in a player identification number through the irs and then registering through sam which is the system for awards management i don't know that it's required for everyone but for small business it is required um and then we have our own vendor portal the inl vendor portal vendor.inl.gov recommend that you register with that um that that gets you into our sort of vendor pool uh so we're aware of what that you're there and that you're interested and then forward your information to stacy in the small business office um so she can also help provide additional information see what's available um and help connect you to the right people so i'd encourage you to do that if that's something you're interested in we have a lot going on like i said there's just work all across the lab and there's a lot of it so it's exciting stuff a lot of availability a lot of options um hopefully this has kind of helped clarify what we do and what we're looking at and how we do it i know it's probably still a bit of a confusing process but i hope that helps somewhat so i'll turn it back to stacy for questions thanks elise well you've been presenting i've been frantically answering questions um so probably the key takeaway that i'm getting from the the questions that are being asked is what's that first point of contact and that's me as the small business program manager i'm your first point of contact for for doing work with idaho national laboratory so you can shoot me an email at small.business inl.gov or like i put in the comment section you can also use my direct email stacey.francis inl.gov when you send me an email though what i need you to do is send me your capability statement and then i need you to tell me in your email where you see your company fitting in with inl um you're better off determining where you think you fit than trying to than me trying to to figure out where you fit so i need you to help me a little bit when you send me that information so that i know who to direct you to um elise i've got a couple questions that i didn't answer i saved them for you okay um so the first one is talking about networking and getting known are your technical slash engineering program offices open to meeting with vendors and i have an answer on that one too if you um well i probably both should answer i'd mention your perspective too i would say it depends um i think some would be i think it depends a lot on what you're offering um and like i said we have such a broad range so um it's hard to give a blanket answer to that i think um i don't want to say no they're not i think they are but i think especially as you get the more technical you are they're going to want to do that that meeting networking more in like a conference setting like that's you know where you'll find out that hey we've got connections we we're utilizing the same or we're asking the same questions we're trying to accomplish the same research goals or whatever if you're looking at something more like maintenance um specifically like like groundskeeping or something um i don't really think that they that's probably more with you and with us as contract specialists to help identify those vendors first and then we may take those back to the technical side i think it really depends on your scope i don't know if you have a better clarification for that nope nope you answered you answered it exactly as i was going to um what i do is the first as the point of contact the initial point of contact within the lab is i take a look at that capability statement and where you think that you fit with inl missions because you're the one that knows your business you're the one that knows where you want to grow expand where your expertise is i use that information that you send to me and then i send it out to the program um and the technical representatives now you have to realize these folks are very busy doing mission work right they're they're focused on accomplishing the missions of the laboratory what happens then is i wait to hear back from them to see if they have an interest um a lot of times there may not be an opportunity on the table and so they store tha away for future um in case an opportunity does come up i also will will um send it to the contract specialist and at least this kind of goes into the next question so i'll prep you for that one in just a minute so that the next time the contract specialist has a solicitation coming up say for groundskeeping or something they've started to collect a tickler file of businesses who have expressed interest in that at the lab and so they can go to that resource as well our contract specialists also use our vendor portal to do market research to identify companies so if you have completed the registration form in the vendor portal and you have not put a business description in we will not find you because we use those keywords to trigger our search and so if you do engineering you need to make sure that that's in that business description it's an unlimited field i don't need your whole line card dropped in there in text but please put those keywords in there for what you do we do search a little bit on next codes as well so um you can have up to three next codes in there so make sure those are listed so elise the question is of the 26 staff people do they focus on specific service areas if yes how can we as possible vendors get to know which people handle our service line yeah and actually there's two groups that do service subcontracts the other group that focuses on infrastructure and construction um so there's actually even more than 26 individuals depending on what area your your work is in um i would recommend again first line is stacy i think send it to stacy um she often knows which contract specialist that needs to go to and if she does not she'll reach out to me or to the other manager um and will help identify who that needs to go to um it's not we don't have like a published list of you know if your fabrication it's here if you're engineered items it's here if it's the ground's keeping it's here because it's fluid it's changing a lot um and we may have more than one person that supports that um and so i think just getting that information to stacy um first and stacey and maybe you disagree but i think you'll you engage us as you need it to help direct those to the right people yeah um you know my job is is a is as a connector right i'm i'm the connection or you're contacting inl and getting your information into the right hands internally and i think it's important to note that that just because i get a con capability statement from you does not mean that i have an opportunity to send to you um we we do a lot of different procurements but um there's not necessarily a specific one that you qualify for today when you send that to me and the reality of it is is that from the initial point of contact with i and i believe it's with any national lab from the initial point of contact to getting that first opportunity bid is somewhere between 18 and 24 months it takes a long time for the right opportunity to come up it takes a long time for um we tend to go to i'll just be honest with you we tend to go with the vendors that we know that are already performing um it's just like in your personal life right if if you've got something that's working for you there's no incentive to try something new um but yet we do have an obligation to look at new contractors and we do and the contract specialist i push them to look to put at least one new vendor on a bid list each time they go out so that we're trying to we really are truly trying to expand our base of subcontractors we're going to have to if we get as much work in as we are forecasting we have to expand our vendor base so there is opportunity but it's not going to help it's not going to happen next week um so you need to be patient you need to be persistent but don't be a pain um because i get a lot of emails and i've put my email out there like 400 times today and i'm just dreading what my inbox is gonna look like so give me a little bit of time to respond back to you um ahead can i add a little to that um you know two things i want to add to that the first is when i mentioned networking i talked about networking with vendors that are already established you know for instance if you provide engineering we have an engineering services contract in place if you can network with the vendor that's already man you know working under that contract maybe they can subcontract to you i mean it's a way to start getting in that that getting us to know oh there's this other vendor out there that can do this work so that's why i mentioned like you said we do tend to go to who we know so it's not a bad plan to try and work with vendors that are already established um it's a great way to get you know noticed if you will and then also you mentioned that it takes some time um and i just you know to reiterate same contract you know we have this engineering services contract you know when we issue that we we compete it we go out to several vendors but when we award it it's a multi-year contract and so a lot of these large competed contracts you're you have to like you said that opportunities may not be there because we may have just awarded that contract for several years and we won't be recompeting it for a while so that that's just a reality of the process yep exactly okay i'm gonna start running through a bunch of these questions um i'm getting a lot of questions about our forecast and opportunities portal people i know you hear this from me every month and i feel like a broken record but i really am trying to get more opportunities posted so that you have an opportunity to know what we have coming up and if it fits in your area sorry the sun's blinding me through the blind there i'm really i'm really working on it um we actually have an initiative underway that we're just trying to kick off within the small business program to kind of do a transformation of our program and it's going to be increasing our acquisition planning doing a better job of identifying opportunities establishing some inner protege agreements which we don't have any in place right now working with the tribe the the native american population there's a whole bunch of this in the comment in the questions section that you'll see i've been answering we really are trying to change the focus of our small business program um so please be patient with me because as a federal government contractor it does not move fast um and it takes buy-in from the top all the way down to the the orgs that are executing the work so i'm working in your best interest i really truly am it's just that this ship is so big that it does not turn on a dime but i'm i'm working on that so there isn't there are opportunities listed at vendor.inl.gov i can't say that there's any listed because there's not if i have any that's where they will be posted okay and i know some people are saying they check every week you know folks check once a month um check once a year right now i mean it's it's one of the biggest frustrations in my job because i'm just not able to get those opportunities posted for you but know that i'm trying really really hard to do that um elise there's been some questions about using um gsa vehicles do you want to address that yeah it's an option um especially pricing gsa pricing we're pretty open to utilizing um in terms of terms it is not our preference we're going to try to negotiate our terms um so if you know if you're trying to if you're a new vendor and you don't have a demand you know we're gonna go to the vendor that's willing to negotiate our terms over gsa terms um we we do negotiate with gsa terms if necessary it's just not a uh ideal for us now and i think i said pricing yes we we will um you know utilize gsa pricing hopefully that answers that we we will use gsa pricing but we don't necessarily use the gsa vehicle so we don't use like the oasis so we don't use the msas we don't you'll find that as an imminent contractor for us we like to control our destiny and there's been some questions about using some sources that are available for for building um solicitation lists we build those all in-house through conversations with the technical point of contact contract specialist and myself um a little bit of how the process works because i know that this has been asked in there a couple times um we generate those solicitation lists in-house and the solicitation package only goes out to those companies that made the solicitation list so we do not post them in the art open market anywhere you will only get it if the solicitation package if you've made that solicitation list the follow on to that is i've been asked if i can identify who some of the contract holders are for some of these blanket agreements again as an imminent contractor i cannot um it's we don't share that information so what we have found and it's a little harder in this environment where we're all working from home and we're working remotely but when you go to conferences that networking that elise talked about is so very very very important because i can guarantee you when i send us when we send a solicitation package out probably within a day everybody in the market or within that area knows who was on that solicitation list and part of that is because they're looking for partnering opportunities right so say company a made the solicitation list but they need some partners to help fulfill the requirements of the the rfp so that's where that partnering is so important um so there's that addresses the question of active vendors or contracts available um we do not post out there the duration of the contracts we do not post any information about post awards um we um let me see there's a lot of questions along that vein so i think i think that that's kind of answered some of them um it's not that we're secretive and and i i kind of get the feeling that that's maybe what people are taking away from this again as part of the small business transformation we're really going to try and be more transparent um in in what we do and how we do it so i'm working i'm working towards that um that we will um hopefully be able to be more transparent about upcoming opportunities and and some of the the way we do business i guess is very much unique to an imminent contractor that managing an operations contractor than it is with the federal government um we only have to flow down the far contracts that are in our prime contract with the department of energy and so for instance a good example of that is we do not have the limitations and subcontracting clause it's not a float it's not a it's not called that in our contract and so we do not flow that down into um our subcontracts so as an imminent we have a lot more latitude in the interpretation of the fars um because we only have to to do what's in our contract so i hope that helps um with answering that question there's a question here on sbir opportunities i don't manage those out of the small business office but again keith if you want to send me an email i can put you in touch with the organization within the lab that does manage the sbirs let me scan back through here um carol carol and carol yes so if you were to receive a contract from bea um that would be a contract with bea not the department of energy so you would be contracting directly with patel energy alliance who is the m o contractor for the idaho national laboratory not with the department of energy and that's where that uniqueness comes in i think that's a common misperception and it gets into again we're not being secretive but we may not be a private business and so we are held to some requirements but we are also not government and so we're not held at the same standards as government either it's a very unique space being an mno contractor so it except it's not an intention of secretism it's just we have different requirements that we're held to and so um keith trail has some questions on here about some specific covid mitigations um keith if you want to reach out to me and and we can talk about this um i'm not specific i'm not sure exactly what you're asking for but um i can certainly try and help help get you an answer let's see elise here's a comment from stephanie sherwood she said that she's also a small business liaison officer so she has the same job as as i do and she said that she often refers to her job as a cat herder which is exactly how we feel sometimes right i feel like i'm hurting cats and we all know how that goes some days but her comment to you was um please let cbs know that you have large businesses working under subcontracted bea and each of them has small business contracting commitments so that's that small business subcontracting plan that a large business has to provide to us if the awards over 700 000 and so they are looking to do specific spend with small business underneath those those really large contracts too so there's opportunities to partner on those large scopes of work um as a small business provider underneath that areas and i know the universities also supply submit small business subcontracting plans so there's opportunities there as well it gets back to the now working with other vendors is really a fantastic way to do work because there is a lot of work that is you know sub-tier subcontracted through our vendors that we already subcontract with whether that be large or small right okay let me scan through some of the ones that have come um for dawn egg yeah i am your point of contact um touch base with me first and then i will try and connect you internally um alan elliott does bea value mbe sbe and dbe certifications you know we have some socioeconomic goals that we negotiate with the department of energy every year but they're in the six main categories they're small disadvantaged business women owned um service disabled uh hubzone and we have a specific idaho goal that's unique to our contract so we have to do 30 of our business within the state of idaho and that is unique just to our contract so those other certifications are cherries on top but they're not um ones that we do set asides in if that makes sense mark shansholtzer on your confirmation email for the vendor portal again send me an email and i can help you get that worked out um here you go elise i'm just going to read this to you i'm skimming it and so i'm going to just read it out loud to you if a solicitation is put out unrestricted are you still likely looking for a small business lead or at that point does it not count to your small business goals no i mean we always are we'll favor small business um now you know if we're we have a solicitation where there's small and large on there then at that point it will be you know it's not generally a factor in in the evaluation of that so you know if it's a low price technically acceptable um if we have a mix um it's going to go to the one that wins that um but our goal is to include those small businesses so that they're trying to achieve that goal yeah we always focus on small business first but if it does go out as a full and open it's going to come down to whatever the requirements are in that solicitation if it's best value low price that's what it's going to come down to i think that's what elise is saying um rick genther no i do not have a list of qualified suppliers on the website again it's one of those things that i can't share but the market's really good at sharing that so again it's about networking um but if you have more questions on that just give me a call send me an email i'm not answering my phone in the office because i'm not there so um for the 30 idle businesses can you provide additional information for example does that mean the business has to have an office in idaho be headquartered there or be willing to place an office in idaho um the way we capture that is based on zip code so it's where we send the bill but that means you have to have more than just a po box sitting somewhere at the idaho falls post office it means that you have to have a viable presence within the state that we can look to when we're contracting so there's there's satellite offices here we're always looking for businesses that want to expand idaho if you haven't been to idaho falls recently idaho falls is in a boom there is a lot of work go ng on here not just with a national lab but with the naval reactors facility they've got a lot of work going on um floor idaho has some work going on with idaho cleanup project and then the commercial world and that is just out of control as well so there's a lot of opportunities in idaho falls in the surrounding area right now just not specifically tied to government contracting and it's a great place to live except today when it's nine degrees outside um our winters do get a little long so we are bumping right up on the 10 o'clock hour [Music] and i know there's a lot of questions out there i think that we've touched on most of them i think that we've gotten the essence of most of the questions and provided an answer um one more time i'm going to give you a couple of um urls to check out so to get registered to do business at the inl go to vendor.inl.gov and to see the webinar series how to get started doing business with idaho national lab the opportunities if we get some posted that's procurement.inl.gov and those are enter those i will link back and forth to each other so once you get to one you'll be able to get to the other and again my email address is stacy s-t-a-c-e-y dot francis f-r-a-n-c-i-s at inl.g.o.v and don't panic if you've used the small.business at inl.gov email address as well because that comes directly to me i manage both of those inboxes so um i hope we've provided some information this provides that that gives you a clearer view of how we do service contracting at the lab if you found this valuable please shoot me an email again as i always ask if you have a specific topic that you'd like us to cover on these webinar series shoot that to me as well i believe that after the march webinar with um john wagner and juan alvarez and marianne um while we're going to move to a uh every other month webinar series so we'll go from march to may and eventually maybe we'll get back into the ability to go out and attend these small business conferences across across the country again i know that that's um it's really hard and we're doing it one-on-one now instead of in a large form where you're able to meet with all the national labs and and discuss everything for um all those labs in one environment so hopefully we'll be getting back to that when travel restrictions get lifted um carol i saw your note the march webinar is march 10th and you can register for that out at procurement.inl.gov it's the fifth little box over on that one and with that again i want to thank you for attending and we will be posting the presentation and a video of this out to that webinar page um as soon as we get it rendered here internally so look for that and everybody have a great day and stay healthy