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NMI gets $15K grant for A&E workshop
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Posted on Jul 06 2004
The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs has awarded the Northern Mariana Islands a $15,000 technical assistance grant to conduct a workshop for local architectural and engineering firms.
The one-day workshop is tentatively scheduled in mid-August 2004, with the assistance of LTC David Press of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Honolulu District. Its focus will be on the preparation of documents for Architect-Engineer 8(a) Program under the Small Business Administration.
Over the past few years, the number of capital improvement projects in the CNMI has drastically increased. In order to expeditiously manage these CIP projects, it has been necessary to transfer administration of some large projects to the Army Corps.
“Although this practice has shown effective results in the utilization of the CNMI’s CIP funds, it came to the attention of the administration that the [Army Corps] was hiring A&E firms mainly from the State of Hawaii to perform work on CNMI CIP projects, instead of utilizing local companies,” according to a statement from the governor’s office. “The [Army Corps] is unable to procure the services of our local A&E firms because our local firms neither have IDIQ contracts with the ACOE, nor are they registered with the Small Business Administration 8(a) program.”
Chuck Jordan, the governor’s special adviser for CIP management, said the workshop aims to help local A&E firms in preparing necessary documents required to become eligible to be contracted by the Army Corps under the IDIQ contract.
The workshop will be conducted by an A&E contract specialist from the Army Corps of Engineers and an 8(a) program specialist from the Small Business Administration.
