Supporting Statement: FOA: Brookwood-Sago Mine Safety Grants

Federal Opportunity Announcement for Grant Applications

Control Number 1225-0086

Brookwood-Sago Assistance Grants Justification

Abstract:

The U.S. Department of Labor ( DOL), Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), is making up to $1,000,000 available in grant funds for educational and training programs to help identify, avoid, and prevent unsafe working conditions in and around mines under section 14 of the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 2006 (MINER Act).

The focus of these grants for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 will be training and training materials for mine emergency preparedness and mine emergency prevention for all underground mines. Applicants for the grants may be States (including U.S. territories), private or public nonprofit entities, to include Indian tribes, tribal organizations, Alaska Native entities, Indian-controlled organizations serving Indians, and Native Hawaiian organizations.

MSHA could award as many as 20 separate grants. The amount of each individual grant will be at least $50,000.

Electronic Availability:

This grant solicitation is available on the grants.gov website. Based on past DOL experience, the Department anticipates 90 percent of responses will be submitted electronically. One application will be submitted by fax at no cost.

Small Entities:

This information collection will not have a significant impact on a substantial number of small entities.

Assurances of Confidentiality:

The grant solicitations do not offer applicants assurances of confidentiality.

Special Circumstances:

This information collection complies with 5 CFR 1320.5

Brookwood-Sago, Applications

For the Brookwood-Sago grants, DOL would normally expect to receive 25 applications.

25 responses (1 per application) x 20 hours = 500 burden hours

80 responses (20 awards x 4 quarters) x 2.5 hours = 200 burden hours

Public reporting burden for each grant application is estimated to average 20 hours per response for reviewing instructions; searching existing data sources; gathering and maintaining the data needed; completing and reviewing the collection of information; and to prepare and submit an application in response to a Funding Opportunity Announcement. For purposes of this information collection request, the DOL assumes that a professional earning $51.31¹ per hour will prepare an application. Therefore, the burden for these reporting activities is as follows using average response times:

Brookwood-Sago Grants, Total Burden

Total Responses: 105 Responses (25+105)

Total Burden Hours: 700 hours (500 + 200)

Burden Cost: $48,745 ($25,655 + $23,090)

The DOL associates no other burden costs with this information collection.

Total burden: 25 respondents (unduplicated), 105 responses; 700 hours; $45 other cost burden.

Supporting Statement B; Statistical Methods:

There are no statistical methods.

1 Most recently available mean hourly wage of a United States “11-9151 Social and Community Service Manager” as reported by the 2015 Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) Survey of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (May 2015) http://www.bls.gov/oes/special.requests/oesm15nat.zip is $33.38. The reported mean value is increased for the annual change in employment costs (2.4%) as reported by BLS using series CIU3010000100000I (state and local management workers total compensation) qtr. 1 2015 to qtr. 1 2016, at http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CIU3010000100000Iand 50.1% for fringe benefits ($33.38 * 1.024 * 1.501 = $51.31).

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