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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 01/04
Containing Wildland Fire Costs: Improving Equipment and Services Acquisition
Frank Fairbanks, Allan V. Burman, Gail Christopher, Patrick J. Kelly, Lyle Laverty, Keith Mulrooney, Paul Posner, Charles Wise
September 2003
Executive Summary
Wildland fire-related acquisition management programs of the five federal land management agencies1 are big business. For example, Forest Service wildfire preparedness and suppressio n contracting costs reached almost $800 million in FY 2002. Even at a lower level, these costs significantly affect other land management programs and their funding. Thus, searching for and taking advantage of methods to achieve cost containment of escalating wildland fire acquisition programs take on added value. That is the basic premise of this Academy report.
Contracting plays a critical and increasingly important role in both wildfire suppression and mitigation. This report describes opportunities to enhance and further professionalize the agencies’ approach to fire management acquisition and thereby achieve cost savings.
A small investment by the Congress should enable the departments of Agriculture and the Interior to establish an analytical function in the wildland fire acquisition management with the objective of identifying and implementing cost-containment opportunities. The Academy estimates that this investment would be approximately one million dollars, and the potential savings could be on the order of 10 percent of each contract’s annual business volume. Since start-up time will be required to establish analysis staffs and begin the analytical process, it is neither reasonable nor practical to expect significant savings the first year. However, as projects are developed and implemented, representing a range of savings based on each contract’s annual business volume, an overall goal of 10 per cent is reasonable over the first five years.
