3-2.1 Advance Announcement of Contract Award to Corporate Communications

The VP, Corporate Communications, plans, approves and manages the communications effort for the Postal Service. Contract awards that exceed $5 million and contract awards of any dollar value that result from spend analysis, strategic sourcing and leveraging and that result in an exclusive or mandatory contract for the Postal Service may have significant media impact and/or may generate interest on the part of Congress. The following procedures apply to preparing and submitting advance announcement of contract awards to Corporate Communications. The CO will:

• Determine whether the contract award exceeds $5 million or otherwise requires announcement.
• Prepare an announcement of award.
• Submit notice to the VP, SM, at least 2 business days before the anticipated date of award.
• Issue/distribute the announcement at least 1 day before the anticipated date of award, as discussed in the Advance Announcement of Contract Award template.
• Retain a copy of the announcement in the official contract file.

The Public Relations unit of Corporate Communications will prepare a draft press release based on the information given in the announcement and will provide the draft to the manager of the CMC for review. No information will be released to the media until the manager of the CMC has approved the press release.