< PreviousThe National Wildfire Suppression Association 11 Up Front Thirty-three years ago, a group of private contractors were approached by the agencies with a suggestion that perhaps the private industry needed a united voice when dealing with them on contract and training issues. Out of that, the National Wildfire Suppression Association (NWSA) was formed in 1991 at a meeting of 10 companies in Reno, Nevada. Their mission was to provide a voice for the professional private fire services. Braving the smoke, heat, and danger of wildland fires, as well as the aftermath of other national disasters, is a multitude of federal, state, and local agencies. When the magnitude of the event exceeds their available resources, these agencies can call in reinforcements from the professional private fire services through pre-existing agreements and contracts. Today, the NWSA represents 375 private firefighting companies in 28 states, as well as Canada and Australia. We can field a workforce of over 15,000 trained firefighters, as well as a large contingency of equipment, during the height of wildfire season. These folks provide resources that include water handling resources, heavy equipment, faller modules, 20-person hand crews, and other specialized resources that complement the toolbox of resources the agencies have for wildland fire response. Today, approximately 45 percent of all fire resources are provided by the professional private fire services. When lives are on the line, the agencies must have confidence in all the resources that are part of the fire community. Since 1991, the mission of the NWSA has been to ensure that its members earn that confidence. NWSA advocacy includes working as a cooperator in the wildland fire services to build positive relationships with agency partners, and to advocate for professionalism within the industry, as well as providing an exchange of information on issues related to the industry. Why is there a need for the private professional contract fire services? It was started in the 1980s during an era of The Role of National Wildfire Suppression Association in Wildland Fire and Emergency Incident Support shrinking agency budgets, and a growing number of large fires. By the end of the 1990s, these events led to the first hand- crew agreement between private wildland fire services and the agencies. NWSA has built many working relationships with the federal, state, and local governments as well as national and state politicians, and prides itself on working to resolve issues of concern to create a better working environment for all parties. Not only do NWSA members provide resources for wildfire response, but they also perform a lot of project work for wildfire recovery and wildfire mitigation. NWSA has long held onto the value of protecting the forest through mitigation work rather than protection by wildfire suppression efforts and the industry stands ready to perform that work not only for agency partners, but for many landowners as well. The majority of NWSA member companies are located in rural America and provide family wage jobs to folks in their areas. Most of their employees live, play, and work in these forests and therefore, they have a personal stake in helping to protect these landscapes and take a strong sense of pride in their accomplishments. � Along with providing wildfire response, the NWSA protects forests across the country through its various mitigation efforts.The National Wildfire Suppression Association 13 Up Front SPECIAL OPPORTUNITY! PLATINUM – $10,000 • A 2 x 3-inch advertisement on NWSA’s Corporate Sponsorship page online. • A discounted rate for a full-page ad in FIRELINE, which is NWSA’s full color magazine. Cost: $1,800 based on two times per year contract, for a total of $3,600. This is a savings of $640 per issue. FIRELINE has a readership of over 3,000! • A full screen advertisement at the annual NWSA National Conference. • A 30-minute presentation during NWSA’s “New Technology” breakout at the National Conference. • A monthly email blast direct to NWSA members with your content. • A monthly social media post (submit content for the post by the 1st of each month). • NWSA membership mailing list. • Sponsorship opportunities at the NWSA National Conference. • Free booth space at our vendor with premium spot choice. GOLD – $5,000 • A 2 x 3-inch advertisement on NWSA’s Corporate Sponsorship page online. • A discounted rate for a full-page ad in FIRELINE, which is NWSA’s full color magazine. Cost: $1,800 based on two times per year contract, for a total of $3,600. This is a savings of $640 per issue. FIRELINE has a readership of over 3,000! • A monthly email blasts direct to NWSA members with your content. • A 15-minute presentation during NWSA’s “New Technology” breakout at the National Conference. • NWSA membership mailing list. • Bi-monthly social media posts (submit content for the post by the 1st of each month). • Sponsorship opportunities at the NWSA National Conference. • $350 off booth space at our vendor. • SILVER – $2,500 • A 2 x 3-inch advertisement on NWSA’s Corporate Sponsorship page online. • A 5% discount on a ¼ page or ½ page ad in FIRELINE magazine, plus a free hyperlink. • Quarterly email blasts to NWSA members with your content. • Quarterly social media posts (submit content by 1st of the month of each quarter). • NWSA membership mailing list. • A five minute “Get to know your vendor” opportunity during NWSA’s annual business meeting. • $250 off booth space at our vendor. BRONZE – $1,250 • A 2 x 3-inch advertisement on NWSA’s Corporate Sponsorship page online. • A 5% discount on a ¼ page or ½ page ad in FIRELINE magazine, plus a free hyperlink. • Quarterly email blasts to NWSA members with your content. • Quarterly social media posts (submit content by 1st of the month of each quarter). • A five minute “Get to know your vendor” opportunity during NWSA’s annual business meeting. • $100 off booth space at our vendor. Each sponsorship lasts for one full calendar year. Become an NWSA Corporate Sponsor and gain access to over 300 companies that need your specific expertise, services, and products! NWSA CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP LEVELS BENEFITS14 www.nwsa.us Wildland firefighting has always been a team effort, and the National Wildfire Suppression Association (NWSA) is not alone on the fireline. Industry partners like the National Mobile Shower and Catering Association (NMSCA), the United Aerial Firefighters Association (UAFA), and the shelter industry are there to help shoulder the load – and carry the challenges – we all have in common. Representing more than 300 wildland fire services contractors across the United States, NWSA’s goal is to elevate the standards of the professional private wildland fire services and raise awareness of the good work being done by its members. “We set ethical standards for our members, which sets our association apart, and we advocate for our members when issues or conflicts arise on the fireline,” says NWSA Vice President, Jess Wills. “NWSA also advocates for better agreements, which leads to better contracts and better working conditions for our members.” Part of this mission also means advocating for best value at a time when the agencies appear to be more interested in lowest price, technically acceptable (LPTA), and the contracts currently being awarded are driven largely by what happens to be the lowest bid. This is a policy that has put contractors into the unfavorable position of entering a price war – where cutting corners to provide the lowest price, yet still the technically acceptable product, has become the norm. GFP Response is a strong supporter of NWSA and is a founding member of the sub-Chapter, National Incident Base Camp Vendors. Its CEO, Don Pollard, believes a contract that is solely based on LPTA, as well as the non-enforcement of many contract provisions, is resulting in a negative marketplace for many fire contractors and crews. He says, “When it comes to crews, the 2023 fire season has been very challenging and a lack of enforcement has enabled the cheaters to prosper. The pursuit of LPTA has created a race to the bottom regarding pricing, and this spells doom for those contractors who are playing by the rules and trying to provide best value.” RISING COST AFFECTS EVERYONE The sudden rise in inflation over the last few years has seen the cost of many of the goods and services supporting the efforts of professional private contractors nearly double. Yet, while inflation may be a challenge for businesses across the board, private fire contractors – unlike most businesses – are unable to increase their rates in lockstep with rising prices. Representing contractors who provide showers and catering services to wildfire incidents, NMSCA has long worked with By Paul Adair, Staff Writer What We All Have in Common Even though its members are high in the air, UAFA and NWSA share the same goals – supporting the wildland firefighters on the fireline. Photo courtesy of Firehawk Helicopters.The National Wildfire Suppression Association 15 Feature NWSA to find workable solutions on contracting issues shared by both organizations, including LPTA. After all, it was the caterers who were the first to experience the LPTA model, followed by fire crews, aerial support, and now showers. NWSA and NMSCA share many of the same concerns related to how contracts are currently awarded, and work together to resolve them. NMSCA Executive Director, Aidin Ansari would prefer to see the government agencies move back closer to the way contracts used to be awarded – where the closest available resource was the one to respond to an incident. “You get a crew with a fire in their own backyard, and they know the terrain, they know where to come in and where to go out, they know the people and they know the area,” says Ansari. “However, the agencies typically don’t recall that resource because they’re more expensive than perhaps a company located eight hours away. Now a fire that was 10 acres when the closest resource could have handled it has grown in the time that the cheaper option takes to drive hundreds of miles to get on site. Does that really provide best value to the taxpayer or the communities we serve? I would say no.” WHAT IS ‘BEST VALUE’ ANYWAY? For NWSA and its partners, best value means taking into consideration price, but also a wide range of vendor factors and qualifications when awarding a contract, such as past performance and experience, training and mentorship programs, demonstration of compliance, and equipment and vehicles. A ‘weighting’ of each particular factor would then be applied to arrive at a score for each vendor and awards would be made to the highest scoring vendors. Going forward, NWSA would like to see a contracting arrangement where the agencies would ensure that the type of contract used first met the needs of a national strategy, rather than allowing cost considerations and established procurement policies to override their programmatic needs. This change would make it so that suppression funds could be used to cover the full cost of firefighting – whether that is aerial- or ground-based – and include the mandatory availability period. This would result in making it easier for the federal government to contract with firefighting companies, as well as help to ensure that there are enough resources available to fight wildfires for the initial attack. “It would also remove the requirement for funding the cancellation ceiling for multi- year contracts at time of award, which could allow the federal government to award longer-term contracts,” says Wills. “This could provide contractors with greater stability and predictability and make it more attractive for them to invest in new technology and equipment.” This is a position that is shared by UAFA and its members. Established in 2022 to better promote safety and standardization for the increasingly critical and complex aerial wildland firefighting community, UAFA brings together the most experienced industry experts to provide a strong and coordinated voice for its members. “Both UAFA and NWSA are working towards the same goal – benefiting the firefighter on the ground,” says Paul Petersen, Executive Director at UAFA. “Whether it is air attack, air tanker, or helicopter, everything that is in the air is there to support the firefighter on the ground.” In addition to having to maintain a constant – and costly – state of readiness, UAFA members’ contracts are primarily set at a fixed price for a certain amount of time. This puts them in a slightly more disadvantaged situation when compared to NWSA members who, even though they need to set prices, can re-set their prices every year. This is not typically an option for the aerial industry, which has to bid a mandatory availability rate for a certain duration of time. Petersen recognizes that, while the majority of contractors take best value to heart and put money into their equipment and focus on paying their people, there are others out there who simply want the business and are going to cut some corners to provide the lowest bid, with potentially disastrous consequences. “When you’re only reaching for the LPTA, you are going to sharpen your pencil and get it down somewhere,” says Petersen. “The danger is that when contractors start to skimp on things like maintenance, training, or anything else related to safety, that will put not only you, your employees, and your business at risk, it will also put greater risk on the firefighters working on the ground.” THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY Prior to joining the UAFA, Senior Policy Director Tiffany Taylor was Senior A firefighter at the Big Windy Complex Wildlands Fire near Galice, Oregon, conducts a prescribed burn – or burnout – operation to help stop the main fire that may head toward this roadway. Photo courtesy of USDA Forest Service / Lance Cheung.continued on page 16 “Now a fire that was 10 acres when the closest resource could have handled it has grown in the time that the cheaper option takes to drive hundreds of miles to get on site. Does that really provide best value to the taxpayer or the communities we serve?” – Aidin Ansari, NMSCA16 www.nwsa.us Procurement Executive for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and, before that, she oversaw the Incident Support Contracting Branch with the Forest Service. This gives her a unique vantage point with which to see both sides of the conversation when it comes to how contracts are awarded. She has seen firsthand the difficulty in instilling subjective elements such as ‘past performance’ and ‘best value’ into the contracting process. “When we would go and ask how a company performed on the fireline, one person would rate it a five-out-of-five and say, ‘It was amazing and gave us everything we needed.’ But another person might give the exact same performance a three-out-of-five and say, ‘Well, it was okay. It was basically what we needed,’” says Taylor. “Right now, there is no way to get an apples-to-apples comparison. Until we can figure out how to make sure people are rating things the same way, nobody will be happy with the results and contractors will feel as though the ratings they receive are being skewed by who is being asked.” Taylor adds, “I am excited about the opportunity we have for the wildland fire service industry associations to work together and develop a past performance process that we could present as an option to the agencies.” The LPTA is a highly complex and contentious issue. Going forward, NWSA and its partners are hopeful that the decision makers in government will listen to the concerns of industry and work with the private professional fire service to achieve a level playing field for all and provide them an environment where value can rise to the top rather than race to the bottom. � continued from page 15The National Wildfire Suppression Association 17 Feature Initiated in 2009 by the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC), the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy (the Strategy) seeks to create a more coordinated and increasingly collaborative effort to make meaningful progress towards more resilient landscapes across the United States, resulting in better fire-adapted communities and a safer, more effective overall wildfire response. This is an ‘All Hands, All Lands’ approach to how wildland fire and fuel reduction is managed, and includes input from a variety of stakeholders, including all levels of government, non-governmental organizations, and the public. The National Wildfire Suppression Association (NWSA) and its members are supporting the Strategy by providing the labor and equipment needed to help with larger fuels projects. In this way, NWSA resources are helping complement and supplement the resources of the agencies, particularly on the fringes of the fire season when the agencies are not completely staffed. “The NWSA membership offers great potential partnerships to the agencies and communities at risk, as many of us work in and around these communities,” says Claren Nilsson, President and CEO of Lost River Fire Management. “We enhance wildfire response, increase capacity, and bring equipment and skill sets the agencies don’t possess, and they are not paid for by the agencies unless they are being productive.” For its part, Lost River supports the efforts of the Strategy by providing crews and its fleet of masticators to create landscape-scale resilience for communities at risk. As part of this support, Lost River recently completed its portion of the landscape-level wildfire resilience project, Fire Adapted 50, which is a fire break around the community of Pollock Pines, California, that was created following 2014’s King Fire. Another NWSA member, California-based Firestorm Wildland Fire Suppression, works on wildfire prevention planning in the community when not on the fireline. The company does this through its GIS (geographic information systems) department and by implementing hazardous fuels reduction work with its crews. This fuels reduction work is typically done through building shaded fuel breaks, which are created utilizing many treatment methods. “The most popular method to create fuel breaks is to manually cut the ladder fuels and chip,” says Jess Wills, President of Firestorm Wildland Fire Suppression, Inc. “What we hear in our areas is that they support our efforts and appreciate the assistance we provide at the local levels.” By Paul Adair, Staff Writer A member of the Tahoe Hotshots implementing the 2023 Sagehen Field Station Underburn Project in the Tahoe National Forest – Truckee Ranger District. Photo courtesy of USDA Forest Service / Jonathan Cook-Fisher. Forest thinning reduces wildland fuel hazards in strategic locations by removing unhealthy trees, which achieves an overall lower level of tree density that will promote natural fire resistance. Photo courtesy of USDA Forest Service / Joe Murphy. continued on page 18 18 www.nwsa.us A CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENT Even though the work being done by NWSA members across the country is appreciated, the unfortunate fact on the ground is that the valuable resources of the private contracting companies are too often left sitting on the sidelines and passed over by the very agencies needing help. This is an issue for anyone concerned with ensuring community safety and fire resilience. This is why overcoming the sometimes-adversarial attitude between the agencies and private industry is so important if meaningful change is to happen. “While the operational people completely understand that we are here to help, where we tend to run into problems is with contracting,” says Nilsson. “We have been seeing issues with late contracts or contracts where the details are changed. Recently, chainsaws were taken out of contract language for the T2 Hand Crew IBPA – can you imagine, a hand crew without saws? Fortunately, we were able to work with operations personnel to talk them into putting saws back into the contract language.” Another challenge facing NWSA members looking to support the Strategy is finding enough labor needed to do the job. Similar to many other industries, the professional private wildland fire service often finds itself struggling to maintain a trained and ready workforce. Exacerbating the issue is the fact that the industry transcends state lines. Case in point, a company like Firestorm needs to pay high wages and provide significant benefits in order to retain staff in a state that is among the costliest to do business. This means that Firestorm – while providing high value – will frequently find itself labeled ‘un-competitive’ in terms of price when compared to other companies based outside California. “One of the largest issues I face in supporting local projects is not even being awarded a project in the first place due to price, while project managers often award projects to out-of-state contractors who don’t have the same overhead or operating costs,” says Wills. “When it comes to creating community enhancement, if project managers aren’t willing to pay more for a local workforce, we’ll never have the local capacity to scale up.” However, despite the challenges in supporting the goals of the Strategy, it is vital for NWSA and its members to continue driving home the message that they are there to help the agencies in their wildland firefighting efforts. “If there is the funding and projects available, I can’t imagine any NWSA member not being willing to provide some form of service to support community wildfire reduction projects,” says Wills. “We need to communicate better about what we as NWSA members do and let the public know about all the good work we can accomplish when we all work together.” � “What we hear in our areas is that they support our efforts and appreciate the assistance we provide at the local levels.” – Jess Wills, Firestorm Wildland Fire Suppression continued from page 17Next >