Facilities Engineer

Summary

This position is located within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Southeast Area, US National Poultry Research Center (USNPRC), Athens, GA. The primary purpose of the position is to provide professional engineering services to the USNPRC Facilities Operations Director in support of that official's responsibilities in the overall operations and maintenance of USNPRC special purpose biosafety and biocontainment facilities and general physical facilities.

Duties

• Oversee utility plant operations, building systems, and distribution networks—including boilers, chillers, generators, etc. to ensure safe, reliable, and compliant facility function.
• Inspect, regularly, campus buildings, utility systems, and specialized laboratory spaces; document facility conditions, identify deficiencies, and estimate maintenance needs and costs for multi year planning.
• Design and review mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering modifications in facilities, including biosafety systems.
• Develop and evaluate engineering designs, drawings, specifications, and project requirements for construction, renovation, and maintenance of biosafety and biocontainment facilities.
• Develop and update the Capital Projects and Repair Plan (CPRP), identifying and estimating costs for capital projects exceeding $25K.
• Develop project estimates, preparing documents for procurement, and managing construction or service contract performance as Contracting Officer's Representative (COR).
• Work as an Engineering Project Manager to manage and supervise Architect-Engineer design services task orders including plan/submittal reviews, payment evaluations, recommendations to the Contracting Officers (CO), and contractor evaluations.
• Write product requirements documents (PRDs) and statements of work (SOWs) for facility repair, construction and renovation contracts.

Qualifications

Applicants must meet all qualifications and eligibility requirements by the closing date of the announcement, including specialized experience and/or education, as defined below. Basic Requirements for Facilities Engineer, GS-0801: You must have either a degree in Engineering. To be acceptable, the program must: (1) lead to a bachelor's degree in a school of engineering with at least one program accredited by ABET; 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 You must have a combination of education and experience -- college-level education, training, and/or technical experience that furnished (1) a thorough knowledge of the physical and mathematical sciences underlying engineering, and (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)1 , 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)2 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 the physical, mathematical, and engineering sciences and that included the courses specified in the basic requirements under paragraph A. The courses must be fully acceptable toward meeting the requirements of an engineering program as described in paragraph A. 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 allinclusive.) AND In addition to the basic requirements above, all applicants must also meet the following minimum qualification requirements: Specialized Experience: Specialized experience is experience directly related to the position to be filled. The specialized experience requirements for the Facilities Engineer, GS-0801-13 is at least one year of specialized experience comparable to at least the GS-12 grade level, in the federal government, or its non-Federal equivalent, which is directly related to the work of this position and which has equipped the applicant with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform successfully the duties of the position. For this position, specialized experience is described as experience applying mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering principles to operate and maintain complex biosafety and biocontainment facilities, laboratories, and animal housing; interpreting building blueprints and system drawings; developing Project Requirement Documents (PRDs) and Scopes of Work (SOWs) for facility repair, construction, and renovation; and managing projects and construction activities; and managing construction projects valued greater than $3 million and conducting facility condition assessments to prepare capital project plans. Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religious; spiritual; community, student, social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience.

Education

Please see above for education qualification requirement information.

How to apply

Please read the entire announcement and all instructions before you begin. You must complete this application process and submit all required documents electronically by 11:59p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on the closing date of this announcement. Applying online is highly encouraged. We are available to assist you during business hours (normally 8:00a.m. - 4:00p.m., Monday - Friday). If applying online poses a hardship, contact the Agency Contact listed below well before the closing date for an alternate method. All hardship application packages must be complete and submitted no later than noon ET on the closing date of the announcement to be entered into the system prior to its closing. Resumes must not exceed two pages. This agency provides reasonable accommodation to applicants with disabilities on a case-by-case basis; contact the Agency Contact to request this. To begin, click "Apply" and follow the instructions to complete the Assessment Questionnaire and attach your resume and all required documents. Please verify that documents you are uploading from USAJOBs transfer into the Agency's staffing system as there is a limitation to the number of documents that can be transferred. However, once in the Agency's staffing system, you will have the opportunity to upload additional documents. Uploaded documents must be less than 5MB and in one of the following document formats: GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, RTF, PDF, TXT or Word (DOC or DOCX). Do not upload Adobe Portfolio documents because they are not viewable. Please ensure your resume does not exceed two pages. Applicants who submit a resume that exceeds two pages will be removed from consideration.