JBER awards Florida firm $565,095 for four buses to carry children in its youth program

The 673d Contracting Squadron at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson awarded Bukkehave Inc. of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a $565,095 contract on Oct. 26 for four passenger buses: three 14-passenger buses and one 44-passenger bus.

The solicitation says the buses will carry school-age children in the base's Child and Youth Program, run by the 773d Force Support Squadron. Its list of required features, called salient characteristics, describes "year-round transportation for school-age children within the sub-arctic climate of Anchorage, Alaska." The award notice says the buses meet those requirements.

The three smaller buses are due at JBER in December. The larger one is due in June 2027.

The buses are paid for with nonappropriated funds, not money from Congress, and the purchase follows the Defense Department's rules for that kind of spending.

The Air Force posted the request for quotes Sept. 11. Quotes were first due Sept. 18, and the deadline moved to Sept. 25 after a bidder asked for more time. The squadron declined to take quotes for the small buses alone or to split the order into two separate requests.

The purchase was a total small-business set-aside, which means only small businesses could bid on the whole contract. According to the award notice, the squadron chose that route because it received a large amount of interest from small businesses during market research, the review it does before buying.