BMC Outsourcing RFP On the Way

The Postal Service expects next month to request proposals on how to contract-out some Bulk Mail Center activities, according to APWU.

APWU reports on its website that its national officers learned of the BMC outsourcing plans during a USPS “pre-decisional briefing” on developments associated with the Request for Information (RFI) Concerning a Time-Definite Surface Network issued by USPS last July.

That document, according to USPS, sought to “identify interested organizations with the capability to implement a time-definite mail distribution and transportation network."

In the RFI, the Postal Service invited private sector companies to indicate whether they were interested in helping to build and operate a private, sub-contracted national or regional network of facilities to support the distribution and transportation of Standard, Periodical and Package mail. Responses were due by September 24.

It appears now, nearly five months later, that USPS received a sufficient positive response from logistics operators to proceed to the next step: solicitating actual proposals on how to outsource some BMC activities.

The Postal Service's interest in privatizing portions of the mail distribution and transportation network represents one of its major cost-containment strategies, according to its updated Transformation Plan.

Attempting to tamp down job anxiety about the impact of potential BMC outsourcing, APWU President William Burrus said, "“While we expect changes to the BMC network and to the employee complement, we do not anticipate that they will result in a significant reduction in the number of USPS employees.” Burrus also held open the possibility of “in-sourcing” some functions that are currently performed by non-USPS employees.