Clarification from the agency

United States Citizens

Videos

As a Construction Analyst at the GS-0828-9/11, some of your typical work assignments may include:

• Determining the cause and extent of damages and methods of making repairs to residential and business structures.
• Estimating the cost to repair and replace personal, business, and commercial property.
• Utilizing mobile and desktop productivity applications such as web browsers, email, spreadsheets, and word processing.
• Conducting on-site assessments of damage to personal, real, and business property that resulted from a declared disaster by the President or SBA.
• In the event of a major disaster, may be assigned to serve as a team lead to other loss verifiers in the field.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• This is a Term appointment, competitive service position with an intermittent work schedule.
• The Term appointment does not confer competitive status, reinstatement rights, or eligibility for non-competitive conversion to a permanent job to the individual(s) selected. You may be promoted or reassigned to another term position within SBA's Office of Disaster Assistance; however, you may not be non-competitively appointed to another Federal position. You will be given an initial Term Appointment lasting more than 1 year, but not more than 4 years. If all other conditions of employment are met, this appointment may be extended, up to a total of four (4) years in increments determined by SBA.
• If selected, employees work on an intermittent (on-call) work schedule. This means that employees are in a pay and duty status only when activated to respond to workload needs, especially in response to heightened disaster activity. When no longer needed, employees return to a non-pay status until the next event necessitates additional staff. However, depending on the workload and/or level of disaster activity, your work schedule may be changed to full-time. Subsequently, if the workload decreases, your work schedule may be changed back to intermittent.
• Mandatory Overtime: In order to respond quickly and efficiently to disaster survivors, substantial compensated overtime hours may be required heighten Disaster Activities.
• If required to travel to a disaster site, you may encounter hazardous working and/or living conditions, for example, no water or electricity and/or minimal lodging facilities.
• The salary range above reflects the employee's base salary. Locality pay may be added based on the location of the employee's residence.
• The U.S. Government pays cost-of-living allowances (COLAs) to civilian Federal employees in Alaska, Hawaii, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Check here for COLA rates
• Your primary residence is considered your official duty station.
• By applying for this position with SBA's US Small Business Administration, you can enjoy challenging but satisfying work and join a highly motivated and diverse team that helps families and businesses rebuild their lives after a disaster.
• Additional selections may be made from this announcement if identical vacancies occur within 180 days from the closing date.
• This is not a bargaining unit position.

Conditions of employment

• U.S. citizenship is required.
• You must be able to obtain and maintain a Government travel credit card.
• Favorable background investigation and credit check are required.
• This is not a bargaining unit position.
• A valid driver's license may be required.
• Must complete a one-year Trial Period.

Qualifications

This position has an individual occupation requirement (IOR) that must be met to be considered. Please ensure to read the following section to ensure you meet these requirements.

In order to be rated as qualified for this position, we must be able to determine that you meet the qualification requirements - please be sure to include this information in your resume. No assumptions will be made about your experience.

For the GS-09/11 level:
1. Undergraduate and Graduate Education: Major study -- architecture, engineering, building construction, or other fields related to the position.(transcripts must be provided with application)

OR

2. Experience in the preparation or review of plans, specifications, or estimates of materials and costs for the construction, extension, alteration, or repair of buildings. Applicants should have knowledge of the residential construction field, and experience in the development of plans and specifications, and in negotiation work. This experience may have been obtained working as a contractor or as a draftsperson in an architectural engineering firm. However, any drafting experience must have provided an opportunity to acquire technical knowledge.

Appropriate experience includes working with diverse construction materials (brick, lumber, reinforced concrete, steel) and types of structures (housing, single-family dwellings and multi-family apartment units, and industrial and commercial structures). Applicants should be familiar with matters such as planning a subdivision, laying out traffic flow in a multi-family apartment structure, or working out specification problems in plans.

In addition to the IOR, you must possess the required specialized experience at or equivalent to the next lower grade level that is equivalent in difficulty and complexity.

Generally, time in non-pay status is not creditable towards the specialized experience requirement listed below.
You must meet all qualification requirements by the closing date of this announcement.

Experience:
To receive credit, you must indicate the month and year as well as the average hours worked per week for each employer. Average work hours must be stated on the resume to quantify each period of work experience or that experience will not be credited toward meeting the specialized experience requirement.
You must address the specific specialized experience required for each grade level of this position on your resume or application or you will be rated "Ineligible" for that grade level.

GS-09: One year of specialized experience, equivalent to the GS-07 grade level in the Federal service, obtained in either the private or public sector:

• Estimating costs to repair or replace personal property;
• Estimating quantity of materials and costs for constructing or repairing homes and businesses; AND
• Utilizing mobile and desktop productivity applications such as web browsers, email, spreadsheets, and word processing.

GS-11: One year of specialized experience, equivalent to the GS-09 grade level in the Federal service, obtained in either the private or public sector:

• Estimating costs to repair or replace personal property;
• Estimating quantity of materials and costs for constructing and repairing homes and businesses;
• Estimating costs to repair or replace machinery, equipment, and inventory; AND
• Utilizing mobile and desktop productivity applications such as web browsers, email, spreadsheets, and word processing.

Additional information on the qualification requirements is outlined in the OPM Qualifications Standards Handbook of General Schedule Positions. It is available for your review on OPM's Qualifications website:

Construction Analyst Series 0828 (opm.gov)

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, knowledge, and skills and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience.

How you will be evaluated

You will be evaluated for this job based on how well you meet the qualifications above.

In order to be considered for this position, you must complete all required steps in the process. In addition to the application and application questionnaire, this position requires an online assessment. The online assessment measures critical general competencies required to perform the job.

For this vacancy, we will use a Category Rating system to refer qualified applicants for consideration. This is a three-step process. First, your resume or other application is evaluated to determine if you meet the Qualifications, including the Specialized Experience described above, for the grade level(s) that you are applying for. Secondly, if you meet the minimum qualifications requirements, your responses to the questionnaire, including narrative responses, if applicable, will be compared to your resume or other application. If your resume does not support the answers you gave on the questionnaire, you may be rated "Ineligible," or you may be placed in a lower category. Third, your name will be placed in one of the three following categories:

• Best-Qualified - highly proficient with an overall comprehensive level of knowledge, skills and abilities related to this position.
• Well-Qualified - competent in the position with an overall accomplished level of knowledge, skills and abilities related to this position.
• Qualified - an overall basic level of knowledge, skills and abilities related to this position.

Application of Veterans' Preference: The Category Rating process protects the rights of veterans by placing them ahead of non-veterans within each quality category. All the veterans must be selected before any non-veterans within each category.

For this position, disabled veterans who meet minimum qualifications for this position and have a compensable service-connected disability of at least 10% (CPS & CP) are placed at the top of the Best-Qualified category regardless of which category they would otherwise be assigned to.

Preference eligibles who do not have a service-connected disability of 10% or more (XP or TP) are placed at the top of their quality category.

Your qualifications will be evaluated on the following competencies:

• Accountability
• Arithmetic/Mathematical Reasoning
• Attention to Detail
• Building and Construction
• Computer Skills
• Cost Estimation and Analysis
• Customer Service
• Decision Making
• Flexibility
• Influencing/Negotiating
• Integrity/Honesty
• Interpersonal Skills
• Learning
• Oral Communication
• Reading Comprehension
• Self-Management
• Stress Tolerance
• Teamwork
• Writing

Overstating your qualifications and/or experience in your application materials or application questionnaire may result in your removal from consideration. Cheating on an assessment may also result in your removal from consideration.