SOLICITATION NOTICE
99 -- Ground-Based Aircraft Height-Keeping Performance Monitoring System Support
- Notice Date
- 8/19/2009
- Notice Type
- Presolicitation
- Contracting Office
- Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), W.J. Hughes Tech Center, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION, AJP-7951 AJA - Technical Center (Atlantic City, NJ)
- ZIP Code
- 00000
- Solicitation Number
- 8669
- Response Due
- 8/24/2009
- Archive Date
- 9/8/2009
- Point of Contact
- William Bleda, 609-485-8609<br />
- E-Mail Address
-
william.bleda@faa.gov
(william.bleda@faa.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- In accordance with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Acquisition Management System (AMS), Section 3.2.2.4, the purpose of this announcement is to inform industry of the basis for the FAA's decision to contract with a selected source via single source procedures. The FAA intends to enter into a single source contract with Integrity Scientific Research of Landisville, NJ. The Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum (RVSM), which was implemented on January 20, 2005, replaced the previous 2000-ft vertical separation standard applied between aircraft operating above 29,000 feet with a 1000-ft value. This change was made in all North American airspace on that date. By agreement of the aviation authorities of the three countries concerned, the Technical Center's Separation Standards Analysis Team is responsible for conducting work to assist in ensuring the continued safety of the change. A key component of this ongoing safety assurance is comparison of actual aircraft height-keeping performance to requirements set out in RVSM regulatory material. The Separation Standards Analysis Team carries out this comparison using specialized data collection systems developed at the Technical Center. One of these systems, the Aircraft Geometric Height Measurement Element (AGHME), was developed at the Center during a two-year period beginning in 2002 and has been deployed to four sites in the Continental United States and two in Canada, with plans calling for establishment of two additional sites in the United States. The purpose of the system is to determine aircraft geometric height, with later processing at the Technical Center resulting in assessment of overall aircraft height-keeping performance. The AGHME system records the times of arrival of an aircraft-emitted signal at five separate AGHME locations within a 20-mile radius from a central AGHME position and later uses the differences in the arrival times to determine aircraft geometric height. In order to determine such height with sufficient accuracy, the standard deviation of the error in stamping the arrival time of the aircraft signal at each location may not exceed 10 nanoseconds. In order to meet this highly demanding accuracy requirement, the Technical Center AGHME engineering team, housed in the Concepts and Systems Integration Team, employed state-of-the-art hardware in the AGHME design and developed customized real-time software for signal processing. This engineering design has been submitted for U.S. patent and the case is currently under review by the U.S. Patent Office. Certain elements of the design are considered to be privileged information. From the early stages of AGHME system design to the present, engineering team identification and resolution of substantive hardware and software problems have resulted from review of Integrity Scientific Research's (ISR's) overall analysis of aircraft height-keeping performance using the AGHME. The iterative process by which improvements in AGHME performance have come about consists of ISR processing AGHME results, computing aircraft height-keeping performance measures, analyzing AGHME resulting operation against design goals and publishing findings for use by the engineering team. In turn, the engineering team uses these findings to refine algorithms and modify operational software. The consequences of these changes then manifest themselves in AGHME results which ISR then uses in the process-compute-analyze-publish model to provide further input to engineering team refinements. As noted, the AGHME system is in use. The system is providing the basis for assessment of aircraft height-keeping performance which is adequate to identify aircraft which do not comply with RVSM regulatory requirements. There is a need, however, to refine AGHME performance further in order to make the system suitable for detecting smaller, long-term degradations in individual-airframe height-keeping performance which have been observed in aircraft height-keeping performance monitoring data collected in Europe and the North Atlantic. Such degradations are of major interest to FAA's Flight Standards, because they may signal a need to modify maintenance requirements set forth in current regulatory material. If such modifications are needed, they must be justified and developed with minimal delay in order to maintain the long-term safety of RVSM operations. The history of AGHME system development to date indicates clearly that the highly specialized overall analysis process developed by ISR is a prerequisite to the further improvements in the AGHME system needed to produce height-keeping performance estimates suitable for investigation of trends in individual-aircraft height-keeping performance. The ISR analysis process and contributions cannot be said to so specialized that only this vendor can supply them. However, the process is so complex and ISR's knowledge of the AGHME system is so extensive that no other vendor can provide the interaction with the AGHME engineering team in a period short enough to allow timely development of a data package to support any required changes to regulatory material. A competitive solicitation is not available for this procurement. If your firm does not agree with this single source determination, please provide evidence of your firm's capability and experience in providing the services outlined above and the FAA will evaluate that information accordingly. All responses to this announcement must be directed by e-mail to William Bleda, Contract Specialist at William.Bleda@faa.gov. by 9 a.m. Eastern Time, August 24, 2009, at the FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center, Contracts Branch, ACX-51, Atlantic City International Airport, New Jersey 08405.
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/DOT/FAA/WJHTC/8669/listing.html)
- Record
- SN01917810-W 20090821/090820000513-b0251ac6483eed1e9ad4b8e7c4674c7b (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
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