SOLICITATION NOTICE
R -- The required support services consists of scientific, engineering and technical assistance, technical and programmatic support services including program management support; technical assessments, analyses, studies, white papers and reports; standards sup
- Notice Date
- 8/7/2013
- Notice Type
- Fair Opportunity / Limited Sources Justification
- NAICS
- 541611
— Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services
- Contracting Office
- Office of the Chief Procurement Officer, Washington, District of Columbia, 20528, United States
- ZIP Code
- 20528
- Solicitation Number
- HSHQDC-13-R-00079
- Archive Date
- 9/6/2013
- Point of Contact
- Patricia A, Oliver, Phone: 2024475648, Patricia A, Oliver, Phone: 2024475648
- E-Mail Address
-
patricia.oliver@hq.dhs.gov, patricia.oliver@hq.dhs.gov
(patricia.oliver@hq.dhs.gov, patricia.oliver@hq.dhs.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Award Number
- HSHQDC-13-J-00012
- Award Date
- 8/9/2013
- Description
- JEFO No.: 179-13 Date: July 31, 2013 PR Number: RNCC-13-50033 1. Agency and Contracting Activity. Identification of the agency and the contracting activity, and specific identification of the document as a "Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity." The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Procurement Operations (OPO) prepared this justification for an exception to fair opportunity. 2. Nature and/or description of the action being approved. DHS/OPO intends to award a task/delivery order without considering other awardees under Scientific, Engineering, and Technical Assistance (SETA II), Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity Contract HSHQDC-09-D-00059 pursuant to FAR 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(B). 3. A description of the supplies or services required to meet the agency's need (including the estimated value). The required support services consists of scientific, engineering and technical assistance, technical and programmatic support services including program management support; technical assessments, analyses, studies, white papers and reports; standards support; network modeling support; cable infrastructure support; security and reliability support; and demonstrations in support of the overall emergency communications mission. The total estimated value for the proposed task order is $2,758,776.44. 4. Identify the exception to fair opportunity and supporting rationale, including a demonstration that the proposed contractor's unique qualifications or the nature of the acquisition requires use of the exception cited. FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(A): The agency need for the supplies or services is so urgent that providing a fair opportunity would result in unacceptable delays. A gap in service would have a major impact on the Undersea Cable Infrastructure (UCI) program, which is a project that provides situational awareness to monitor the health of the undersea cable infrastructure. The UCI program is instrumental in maintaining Continuity of Government (COG) by providing real-time situational awareness and decision support to mitigate impacts to critical services, should catastrophic undersea cable disruption occur. In short, the tool, which is shared with external organizations, would not be supported if a gap in service does occur. Secondly, a gap in service would have a significant impact on Standards' efforts due to the loss of SMEs. Undersea cable infrastructure (UCI) Due to the ever increasing global reliance upon worldwide telecommunications via the undersea cable infrastructure (UCI) to facilitate the performance of NEF, DHS has initiated efforts in establishing a strategy to ensure uninterrupted national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) services, to enhance global infrastructure resiliency, and to facilitate efficient mitigations in the event of man-made or natural disasters. The UCI Program is critical to the global telecommunications network from the perspectives of NS/EP, global economy, and global telecommunications. The major activities of the UCI Program include: - UCI Knowledge Transfer - UCI Tool Development - Stakeholder Engagements - Global Infrastructure Resiliency Support Delay or gap in service impacts: - NCC and NCCIC users will not have the current UCI information for addressing their cable system mitigation actions. - NCC and NCCIC users and analysts will not be supported by the UCI capabilities for their analysis works due to all maintenance activities and critical upgraded/updated analysis capabilities of the UCI Tool will be stopped. - The UCI database will get out of sync and ACS will not be hosting the backup server for access by the DHS analysts. - Seamless Tool sharing between DHS OEC and DoD DISA will stop. OEC is in the process of creating a mutual agreement with DISA on UCI tool sharing. - Outreach activities and stakeholders engagements will stop. - UCI program provides planning and analysis capability for the DHS NCCIC and Defense Information Systems Agency on the communications cable infrastructure worldwide. This program gives the operational front line personnel the tools to quickly make recommendations for mitigation and restoral of undersea cable communications assets worldwide. Without this tool senior leaders will not have the insight to make decisions to keep National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications online. - UCI supports external customers including DoD. - In the midst of hurricane season, we need UCI to be prepared for major weather events. Standards The telecommunication industry standards groups are addressing the evolution of networks from the current technologies/systems to 3rd Generation (3G), Wireless Fidelity (WiFi), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax), IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), and Long Term Evolution (LTE) based technologies/systems and IP-based networks, which will provide greater efficiencies and additional user services. Industry groups are also looking into the structure of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that will be necessary to spell out performance and quality of service criteria beneficial to users. As networks evolve, existing emergency communications capabilities need to be incorporated into the newer technologies and network types. As a result, work is needed to specify the end-to-end service capabilities for real-time voice, data, video, and multimedia communications for use in emergency communications. Some of the pertinent standards development groups where this work needs to be done include: 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), 3GPP2, the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Telecommunications Industry Associates (TIA), the IEEE, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the TeleManagement Forum (TMF), the WiMAX Forum, and similar bodies. OEC currently has only four FTEs dedicated to standards development work. The SMEs provided by this contract perform a vital function of championing the OEC's requirements as directed by the government personnel. OEC needs to continue to receive technical support and expertise provided by a bridge contract (until the new contract is awarded) with respect to the following technical areas such as: public network vulnerability analysis, network modeling, public safety emergency communications, communications standards development, and cable infrastructure analysis, all of which directly contribute to fulfillment of the OEC's emergency communications mission. If this support were to lapse, then emergency communications would not be current in the event of a national emergency because the OEC would lack vital contemporary technical standards needed for the development of required capabilities and the analyses service capabilities that are required during such emergencies. The incumbent contractor meets all of the current requirements for support and is positioned to continue providing their current level of support to the OEC programs. The incumbent has gone through the lengthy process of obtaining Top Secret /SCI (Special Compartmented Information) clearances for their key personnel. Based on the company's technical expertise and knowledge of the market place there is no other company that can obtain badging and clearances and learn the OEC communications mission or processes by the start of the new contract. Due to the incumbent's numerous years of experience with the current contract, the contractor is uniquely familiar with the OEC's mission, processes, requirements of, and the necessary technical support needed by the OEC. The technical support performed under the current TTSS task order is very complex. It would be extremely difficult if not impossible to solicit a new contractor and award this new contract prior to the present scheduled expiration August 9, 2013. If an award is made to a contractor other than the incumbent there would not be sufficient time for a new contractor to become familiar with the day-to-day OEC mission. A new contractor would need to employ the incumbent as consultants due to the complexity of support required in order to provide the same level of technical support and standards development experience presently provided by the incumbent and required by the OEC. Therefore this will increase the cost of the new contract beyond its current level. We estimate a 50% increase in staffing levels (new contractor staff plus consultants) to maintain the current level of technical expertise. Any other contractor, even with additional staff employed, may not be fully up to speed with the OEC's mission for at least three months. Without a continuation of the existing contract support, the OEC would then have a gap in technical support for at least three months and potential harm to the emergency communications mission would occur. The OEC's Mission requires that OEC coordinate the planning for and provisioning of emergency preparedness communications under all circumstances, including crisis or emergency, attack, recovery, and reconstitution. This includes the modeling and analysis of critical infrastructure to identify vulnerabilities; the modification, creation and implementation of standards and specifications to instantiate specific requirements, and in general to ensure interoperability, mobility, ubiquitous coverage, and survivability of communication networks. The continued technical support that would be provided by the incumbent will ensure the availability of the existing and future capabilities in the event of an emergency which could occur at any time. 5. Determination by the contracting officer that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable. The Program Office will review the labor mix and hours to determine if the contractor's proposal is acceptable to perform the requirements of the statement of work successfully. Additionally, the contracting officer has determined that the anticipated prices will be fair and reasonable based upon the SETA II labor rates which have already been determined to be fair and reasonable. The rates under the SETA II contract will be utilized for the new bridge task order. 6. Any other facts supporting the justification. There are no other facts to support the justification. 7. A statement of the actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers that led to the exception to fair opportunity before any subsequent acquisition for the supplies or services is made. National Protection and Intelligence Acquisitions Division (NPIAD) is in the process of conducting a competitive award for a task order against the current IDIQ holders. As a result, adequate competition will be obtained for the new requirement. Currently the file is at the Office of General Counsel for review. It is anticipated that the request for proposal will be issued the first week of August 2013 and an award is expected on or about September 23, 2013.
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/DHS/OCPO/DHS-OCPO/HSHQDC-13-R-00079/listing.html)
- Place of Performance
- Address: SAIC, 1710 SAIC Drive, McLean, Virginia, 22101, United States
- Zip Code: 22101
- Zip Code: 22101
- Record
- SN03141674-W 20130809/130808000926-2a889f4573084895767d55185d05a8ca (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
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