Link to Full Announcements:
- MERIT/OTHER FED ANNOUNCEMENT — OR Merit-2019-0028: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/524724600
- PUBLIC/OPEN COMPETITIVE ANNOUNCEMENT — OR-DEU-2019-0012: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/524725800
Open & closing dates: 02/19/2019 to 02/25/2019
These positions are located in the Grants Pass Resource Area, stationed in the Grants Pass Interagency Office (Grants Pass, Oregon), the Ashland Resource Area, stationed in the Medford District Office (Medford, Oregon), stationed in the Medford District Office (Medford, Oregon) and the Swiftwater Field Office, stationed in the Roseburg District (Roseburg, Oregon).
These positions provide leadership and guidance to civil engineering technicians and forest engineers assigned to work on engineering and timber projects. The incumbents assist in the accomplishment of resource area, district and BLM goals and is an integral part of the resource area interdisciplinary teams. These positions manage the resource area transportation system over a highly complex land ownership pattern. The incumbents have direct responsibility for transportation and construction planning, budgeting, surveying, designing, contracting, timber management, and contract administration. The incumbents have overall responsibility for the construction and maintenance portion of timber sale contracts in addition to all other construction and maintenance projects within the resource area. Timber sale contracts, service contracts, construction contracts, and the maintenance crew organization are used to achieve transportation management goals. The incumbents frequently facilitate road use issues with reciprocal right of way partners and a highly diverse public in support of controversial forest management and road use program.
Physical Demands: Field work is physically demanding. The lead forest engineer must be capable of extended periods of walking and working in rough mountainous terrain, extremely dense brush, logging slash, and ground that is either wet or covered in snow. The incumbent must possess strength, stamina, and agility to successfully complete field work. Indoor office work necessitates long hours of sitting, intense concentration, telephone conversations, operating computer terminals, and attending meetings and trainings. Work requires the ability to effectively cope with pressure associated by both fixed and irregular deadlines, and managing multiple priorities.
Work Environment: Work is routinely performed in a properly heated/cooled indoor office setting and outdoors that may include extremely hot/cold/windy/dry/wet/snowy weather in rugged terrain, remote sites, poison oak, bees and hornets, snakes, logging and construction sites and occasionally at public meetings. The position requires operation of motor vehicles on narrow mountainous roads. Protective gear is necessary for field work. A valid State driver’s license is required.
For the GS-0460 series, in addition to meeting the basic entry requirement, applicants must have specialized experience and/or directly related education of the position to be found qualified. To be creditable, this experience must have been equivalent in difficulty & complexity to the next lower grade. Specialized experience for the GS-11 Forester: 1 year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the GS-09 level in forestry related work. At this level, work assignments require the forester to determine approaches and solutions using professional knowledge or experience of forestry operations. Examples include experience which provided knowledge and skill in applying forest management principles and practices as well as related laws, regulation and policies sufficient to support forestry-oriented, multiple-use land management programs such as trespass, public coordination, contracting, survey and records, silviculture, cruising/appraising and forest products sales; -OR- 3 years of progressively higher-level graduate education leading to a Ph.D. degree or Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral degree in the field of forestry or directly related fields of study; -OR-have an equivalent combination of the type and level of experience and education described above. Only graduate level education in excess of the first two years may be combined with experience.
For the GS-0810 series, in addition to meeting the basic entry requirement, applicants must have specialized experience and/or directly related education of the position to be found qualified. To be creditable, this experience must have been equivalent in difficulty and complexity to the next lower grade. Specialized experience for the GS-11 Civil Engineer: 1 year of specialized experience equivalent to at least the GS-09 level in Civil Engineering related work. Examples include: perform professional engineering work in the coordination and review for survey, design, construction and maintenance of structures, roads, dams, water control structures, storage facilities, range projects, bid draft review, & contract administrative overview. Establish inspection requirements, schedules & control methods, & develop hazard reduction program; -OR- three years of progressively higher level graduate education leading to a Ph.D. degree or Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral degree in a field of study that is directly related to the duties of this position -OR- a combination of specialized experience and graduate education as described above.
Education
The basic requirement for the GS-0460 series is a bachelor’s degree in forestry; or a related subject-matter field that included a total of at least 30 semester hours in any combination of biological, physical, or mathematical sciences or engineering, of which at least 24 semester hours of course work were in forestry. The curriculum must have been sufficiently diversified to include courses in each of the following areas:
Management of Renewable Resources – study of the science & art of managing renewable resources to attain desired results. Examples of creditable courses include silviculture, forest management operations, timber management, wildland fire science or fire management, utilization of forest resources, forest regulation, recreational land management, watershed management, & wildlife or range habitat management.
Forest Biology – study of the classification, distribution, characteristics, & identification of forest vegetation, & the interrelationships of living organisms to the forest environment. Examples of creditable courses include dendrology, forest ecology, silvics, forest genetics, wood structure & properties, forest soils, forest entomology, & forest pathology.
Forest Resource Measurements and Inventory – sampling, inventory, measurement, & analysis techniques as applied to a variety of forest resources. Examples of creditable courses include forest biometrics, forest mensuration, forest valuation, statistical analysis of forest resource data, renewable natural resources inventories & analysis, & photogrammetry or remote sensing.
Combination of education and experience: courses equivalent to a major in forestry, or at least 30 semester hours in any combination of biological, physical, or mathematical sciences or engineering, of which at least 24 semester hours were in forestry. The requirements for diversification of the 24 semester hours in forestry are the same as shown above, plus appropriate experience or additional education.
The basic requirement for the GS-0810 series, a bachelor’s degree in professional engineering. To be acceptable, the curriculum must: (1) be in a school of engineering with at least one curriculum accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) as a professional engineering curriculum; or (2) include differential and integral calculus and courses (more advanced than first-year physics and chemistry) in five of the following seven areas of engineering science or physics: (a) statics, dynamics; (b) strength of materials (stress-strain relationships); (c) fluid mechanics, hydraulics; (d) thermodynamics; (e) electrical fields and circuits; (f) nature and properties of materials (relating particle and aggregate structure to properties); and (g) any other comparable area of fundamental engineering science or physics, such as optics, heat transfer, soil mechanics, or electronics.
OR
B. Combination of education & experience – college-level education, training, and/or technical experience that furnished (1) a thorough knowledge of the physical and mathematical sciences underlying engineering, & (2) a good understanding, both theoretical and practical, of the engineering sciences and techniques and their applications to one of the branches of engineering. The adequacy of such background must be demonstrated by one of the following:
1. Professional registration or licensure – Current registration as an Engineer Intern (EI), Engineer in Training (EIT), or licensure as a Professional Engineer (PE) by any State, the District of Columbia, Guam, or Puerto Rico. Absent other means of qualifying under this standard, those applicants who achieved such registration by means other than written test (e.g., State grandfather or eminence provisions) are eligible only for positions that are within or closely related to the specialty field of their registration. For example, an applicant who attains registration through a State Board’s eminence provision as a manufacturing engineer typically would be rated eligible only for manufacturing engineering positions.
2. Written Test — Evidence of having successfully passed the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) examination or any other written test required for professional registration by an engineering licensure board in the various States, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico.
3. Specified academic courses – Successful completion of at least 60 semester hours of courses in physical, mathematical, and engineering sciences & that included the courses specified in the basic requirements. The courses must be fully acceptable toward meeting the requirements of an engineering program as described.
4. Related curriculum – Successful completion of a curriculum leading to a bachelor’s degree in an appropriate scientific field, e.g., engineering technology, physics, chemistry, architecture, computer science, mathematics, hydrology, or geology, may be accepted in lieu of a bachelor’s degree in engineering, provided the applicant has had at least 1 year of professional engineering experience acquired under professional engineering supervision and guidance. Ordinarily there should be either an established plan of intensive training to develop professional engineering competence, or several years of prior professional engineering-type experience, e.g., in interdisciplinary positions. (The above examples of related curricula are not all-inclusive.)