Border Patrol seeks unusual ‘strategic consulting’ advice

It looks as though the Border Patrol is seeking assistance from outside consultants to help it pick the brains of its own senior leaders, develop its overall strategy, design “effective automated risk-assessment systems,” devise tools for analyzing information and intelligence to support its operations and even develop its own “concept of operations,” or CONOPS.

The Office of Border Patrol, a unit within U.S. Customs and Border Protection, issued a solicitation on July 27 which envisions a 100 percent small business set-aside contract for a consulting firm to assist with virtually all of the top-level deliberations normally associated with an agency’s own senior management team.

The solicitation identifies a number of tasks this consulting contractor will be asked to tackle:

• Facilitate discussion with senior Border Patrol leaders in a conference setting;
• Delivering a strategic planning conference at the end of each fiscal year;
• Providing “insight, thought leadership, and high quality strategic advice” to senior Border Patrol leaders “on an array of homeland security matters”;
• Developing effective automated risk-assessment systems that use electronic data, intelligence and technology to identify and mitigate risks within Border Patrol operations;
• Implementing concepts of operations, or CONOPS, for controlling and securing the borders between points of entry;
• Developing immigration control solutions.

The statement of work that accompanies the complete solicitation identifies three “key personnel / authorized users,” including two “executive consultants” and one “senior consultant.”

The consulting firm will be expected to organize the first of the annual strategic planning conferences within 60 to 90 days of the contract award date, says the statement of work.

The SOW indicates that CBP and the Border Patrol expect the “facilitators” who would help run the brainstorming sessions with senior leaders must have experience with their field. “All facilitators must be recognized experts in CBP’s business processes, operational environments, stakeholder communities, past and present CBP organization missions and strategies,” says the solicitation.

Further information is available from Shaun Saad, a contracting officer, at 202-344-1971 or Shaun.Saad@dhs.gov. Proposals are due from small business candidates by August 3.