2009 Nat’l Buying Team Leader Meeting

/ April 14-16, 2009
San Antonio, TX
Riverwalk Holiday Inn
Meeting called by: / Ron Schilz / Type of meeting: / National Buying Team Leader annual meeting
Facilitator: / Ron Schilz / Note taker: / Cindi Boukidis
Attendees:
Ron Schilz (WO-AQM, National Buying Team Coordinator), Debby Wesselius (BT coordinator & BT alt leader Northern Rockies), Brad Bauer (Rocky Basin), Janet Paul (NorthwestTeam 1), Tamie Thompson (Eastern Area), Maurica Owen (Northwest Team 2),Deb Strickland (Deputy leader, Alaska), Pat Dearing (Southwest Team 2), Mark Hostetler (Alt. member, Southwest 1), Denise Storms (California Team 2), Judy Reddin (California Team 1)

Notes:

Agenda item: / Welcome and Introductions / Presenter and Date: / Ron Schilz
April 14
Discussion:
Concern that each buying team doing processes different, which will make it difficult on home units and transition of teams when multiple teams are assigned. Hoping to define and agree on processes this week.
Agenda item: / Round Table, 2008 Assignments / Presenter and Date: / All
April 14
Discussion: / Every leader reviewed assignments and issues during these assignments.
Debby Wesselius, CA and Texas assignment, issues with meals, recording issues when multiple teams are assigned. Shasta Trinity Audit, got to hear the person that did this (Kathy) concern of the forest changing the original make up of documents.
Ron Schilz; went to CA and put together an adhoc team – Redding was a very busy assignment – only had 1 warranted person with him so he had to do a lot of the purchases over $3K although the team worked well together. Seems every team went to Redding, CA – was asked to buy bugles and stars which he did not do; turned it over to the IBA. Also went to Oregon. The type 2 team that was assigned had a BT on pre-order. The Forest AO did not know BT was coming; really did not need a BT for that fire alone. Stayed and worked because of a large type 3 incident also going on. Teams demobing and then being told they need a LUA (after the fact), on a concession operated campground and per the contract had to reimburse the concessionaire for use of sites.
Denise Storms – TahoeNF, on American River Complex for 45 days, had a PUL so that was helpful. Went to Redding. Same issues with the BT log.
Mark Hostetler, EERA for incident only is a problem, used to be able to write for the entire contract period, incident only is inefficient. Suggests that EERA expiration date be in the winter not beginning of the summer. Linda (as reported by Pat Dearing) did go to Redding and it was overwhelming to keep up, but had a lot of local support to supplement the team. Had some difficulties with using the subtotal feature of the spreadsheet. Appears that when each new team comes in to support, BT ends up buying same items over and over.
Pat Dearing, when you are the 5th or 6th team on the same fire it is difficult. Pat’s team did 4 assignments, 1 NM BIA fire 6 days, real slow, good refresher. Then to CA on the Plumas NF, good assignment only had 5 people, challenge to find motel rooms in small community, used local college. 1 CA Six Rivers NF, challenges when camps were closing and equipment needing to be returned with no record of what was rented and having this equipment on the fire, two BT’s supporting 1 camp was a challenge. Went to Texas for Hurricane Ike, challenge for what to take when you are the first team and the hurricane has just occurred, motels – need cash because credit cards don’t work and no food to eat due to lack of electricity, look for airport motels because they usually have back up electricity, workload was not tremendous because FEMA normally gets the big stuff like water and Gatorade and they had equipment like generators staged, minimal equipment. Need to be prepared for the conditions when you are going to respond to a hurricane (i.e. flashlight, cash, food). Had to do a lot of internet orders due to businesses being closed, orders were being routed to a UPS station that was closed so orders were being held up for about 4-5 days – FEDEX was delivering anyway so keep that in mind – might want to check with UPS or FEDEX to see who is delivering before you place your order.
Deb Strickland,Alaska team went to Texas on hurricane assignment. One team to support the state of Texas (not connected to a local forest). Had to get laptops set up to wireless, adjusting to the state of Texas regulations could have used a few more BT members. Used spreadsheet, and followed the prior teams log and filing procedures, did an EERA for incident only – but did it through end of September because incident only EERA would not meet the needs, LUA’s – did not have base camps had folks in motels due to inability to sleep on the ground, did a few airport LUA’s. Did most of the negotiating on phone due to the long distances from ICP to camp. Had meal agreements set up and motel agreements set up to feed and lodge firefighters – changing charge card #’s for each motel and restaurant every two weeks is difficult for all the vendors when you have to lodge and feed all incident personnel – need a better way to track and pay this. Did most orders on phone, except for the businesses that required you to be there in person, so more check writing was done because you could not easily drive to all businesses due to the location being so far away when you are covering the whole state. Issue with having to pay for rooms being held that did not get used due to crews moving constantly, then FEMA took over some responsibility and had to try to adjust credit cards, some motels were charging each day separate for each room which was a disaster to reconcile. Texas does not allow government to pay tips, so they had to have the restaurants add a service fee on the bill, where as the FS allows payment of tips. Paying for motels and meals takes a high $ level CO due to high cost. Got an authorization from the State of Texas to allow for the need to pay for motel rooms where folks did not show due to being moved to follow the storm and could not cancel rooms not used. It took months to reconcile all the charges. Sometimes it’s best to keep large items (trash, phones) on the first teams card because to is too difficult to change every two weeks. Team was also staged in Arkansas for a hurricane but nothing happened – only a 5 day assignment.
Maurica Owen, 4 assignments; 2 in CA, 2 in Oregon. Six Rivers assignment we got held in Redding for several days staging, then started supporting the Lassen NF but it was not real busy, supported the POD (rental vehicle operation out of Redding) spent 3 weeks in Redding, 2nd assignment in Yreka was very busy; spent two weeks there. 2 in Roseburg, Oregon 21 days and 14 days; pretty busy on both Oregon assignments. Expanded in Roseburg did not seem to understand the ordering procedure for dispatch priority list, expanded is AD’s and they were not well informed so BT had to do some education which is awkward. Hard to clean up what has been ordered (i.e. phones, dumpsters, etc) by dispatch or district folks prior to BT arriving.
Tamie Thompson; 3 assignments, 1st Iowa (FEMA flood) only needed small team wanted us to mentor FEMA – it was a problem because they ended up training two FEMA CO’s that did not really want the help to mentor in keeping logs and records. CO’s were not receptive to help given and short BT was released. Went to Yreka, CA behind a team and got very busy. Not many fires had PUL’s and IBA wanted BT leader to go to camp every other day, hard to keep up – struggle between Eureka and Yreka, had to split team to support both locations, the two IBAs could not get along between the two areas to support which became difficult. Burn over on Panther fire was very consuming to support and continue normal fire camp ordering business. They put two camps together from two different forests, it did not work well. Went to Nevada next, type 2 team assignments most land was on NF land except a US Marine base in the middle of the NF, fire burned some ammunition caches – then supported a type 1 assignment in same state and stayed 18 days in Elko. Paperwork to pay off the Marines and trailer rentals is still taking a lot of time.
Brad Bauer, 1 assignment in Redding, CA – 21 day assignment. Did some LUA’s, supported 84 Base mostly.
Debby Wesselius, as a PUL did lots of LUA’s for water where land owners wanted water replaced versus payment for water. Can negotiate with cities to pump water from irrigation department of water to pump water back in. Paid by the acre of water, based on records from air ops as to how much was taken out of each site. Difficult to ascertain who owns what body of water but water districts usually know who owns what land.
Janet Paul, 5 assignments. 1st assignment in Santa Barbara; they were physically located with the IC team at ICP, this works well when Buying Team can be co-located with the IMT, better communications and interactions with the entire overhead team. 2nd assignment in Redding, transitioned with the Northern Rockies Buying Team, supporting Iron Complex, Lime Complex and Base 84, on day 1 of the assignment the helicopter accident occurred with nine fatalities, it was called the Iron 44 incident and was also supported by Buying Team, was a very emotional assignment. We supported several teams in conjunction with the accident: NIMO team, Serious Accident Investigation Team, Critical Incident Stress Teams, Honor Guard, OSHA, NTSB, and a Memorial Planner. All orders for Iron 44 were being reviewed by the NIMO team prior to going to the BT. Some of the unique orders we received were for flags, flag boxes, GPS survey of accident site, mourning bands for the uniform badges, purple ribbon and safety pins, sim card for downloading pictures off of cell phones from the accident site, rental of a hanger at the airport for helicopter parts, U-haul for transportation of helicopter parts (chain of custody issues), convention center rental for memorial service. There was pressure from the host Forest (Shasta-Trinity) to issue the death gratuity check to the family of Forest Service employee who died in the accident (and who resided in the Redding area). This created several questions on the appropriateness of Buying Team Leader, from out of the Region, writing this check. Eventually did receive USDA approval for the death gratuity check, however, close coordination with ASC-Benefits Section to ensure they had a copy of the check for the file, and to avoid a duplicate payment to the family. This function should remain with the local unit and not an out of area team. Everyone involved had time with the critical incident stress team except BT, in hindsight, I should have asked for this service as well for the Buying Team Members. 3rd assignment was Hurricane Ike in Dallas, Texas supporting 2 Type 2 teams and a NIMO team in Jackson, MS. We staged for 4 days, and then returned to Oregon. 4th and 5th assignments were on the Mt. HoodNF, and the Rogue River/Siskiyou/Umpqua NF’s.
Judy Reddin, Thank you to everyone who came to CA and helped us with the fires.
Team had 7 assignments all located in California. First assignment was on the Angeles NF. During that fire all EERAs expired. Had to draft a number of EERAs. Moved to the San BernardinoNF for another small incident and had the same issue.
Had two assignments on the Los Padres – Indians and Basin Incidents.
Also had two assignments on the Shasta-Trinity.
Had one other small incident on the Los Padres.
Part of team were at the Sequoia for four days to give the local team days off.
Problems encountered:
  1. BT records were not complete in regards to all of the phone lines that were installed. Consequently, it took months to get all the phone lines disconnected. Judy was still paying phone bills in January. Need to develop a system to track all phone lines.
  2. Difficulty determining what had been rented and who was paying the bill.
  3. Buying Teams did not all use the same spreadsheet. This made it difficult to research and track total costs.
  4. Copies of purchases were not left for a considerable number of orders. Difficult to research. Also, blanks in the fill information on the spreadsheets.
  5. Had to do 4 EERAs for same piece of equipment as it moved from fire to fire. Need a way to do one EERA for the season.
  6. On the Indians and Basin Incident executed approximately 100 EERAs. This was a substantial workload for the Buying Team Leader and other CO who was there for a portion of the assignment.

Agenda item: / Buying Team Records Audit on the Shasta-Trinity NF (Conference Call) / Presenter and Date: / Kathy Cromwell-Christian, Independent Resources Enterprise Team
April 14
Discussion: / Conference call to give observations about audit of BT records. Forest (SHF) hired the enterprise team to come review records from the 2008 fires. Forest wanted Kathy to review all BT records. Forest brought a non-FS team in after all the fires to organize all documents and put in order, this team did not understand the buying team recordkeeping and rearranged some records so that during the scanning of records the original integrity of purchase documentation may have been compromised. This also created a larger number of missing receipts.
9 Issues on report:
1) Spreadsheet (log) not maintained in the manner similar for all BT’s, incomplete entries, inconsistent. Kathy saw this as a critical role to have competent data entry to monitor incomplete or missing information and leave a good product. Kathy supplies a PCMS report of missing receipts showing which BT members made purchases that are missing receipts.
2) Invoices do not have proper documentation, i.e. if receipt gets detached can’t identify the fire it goes to. Invoices without S# or p-code/name of fire, concern again if it gets separated.
3) Numerous receipts without waybills. If it has more information rather than less information it is helpful if it gets detached.
4) Receipts show taxes paid.
5) Meal receipts without list of who ate, incomplete.
6) Government purchase of newspapers, not for personal use, mixed # being purchased for fires above the 10 per day normal.
7) Should have been a set of folders for property items by fire, items to be returned, one master spread sheet. Utilities should be recorded separate. Rentals of copiers and phones and utilities, rented for a very long time, records of payments were not complete – keep a running record and file for each in a separate folder for each. Capture serial numbers.
8) Durable property (more than one incident) should be marked with agency specific marking, not a BT function. Extensive thumb drives and helmets, hard to account for; not a buying team issue. Forest needs to set up a system to track and get back.
9) Missing invoices; had APC request report of any cardholder that charged to these incidents, so forest can seek out missing invoices from these cardholders.
Conclusions/
Decisions: / Kathy recommends better methods to improve records.
Action items / Person responsible / Deadline
Plan to cover in topics this week for items that are BT related. / All / n/a
If a BT leader wants to see the list of missing receipts, contact Ron or Kathy, to get copies so you can provide the Shasta Trinity with missing documentation. / All / n/a
Agenda item: / Qualifications and Training, 5109.17 Update, Refresher Training (BT) / Presenter and Date: / Ron Schilz
April 14
Discussion: / Proposed changes.
PROC Position modification proposed: Add BUYL to other positions that maintain currency. We are discussing the possibility of requiring a $100K warrant or COR Certification; this would get more folks qualified and it would get more folks in camp to do the position. Updates to 5109.17 for BT positions need AQM review, not just finance folks. Concern that some COR’s may not have well rounded experience.
If they are qualified due to the COR certification, they may need to be fire COR certified to have the special skills needed. Would still need to do the task book for a PROC.
BUYL Position modifications proposed: Add S-260 and I-100 to required training. Add PROC to other positions that maintain currency. We are discussing changing the warrant requirement to $25K currently says $100K, would keep the $100K requirement on the team, but not necessarily the leader.