SPECIAL NOTICE
D -- BAA- RFI Land Mobile Radio Networks
- Notice Date
- 8/29/2013
- Notice Type
- Special Notice
- Contracting Office
- MICC - Fort Gordon, Directorate of Contracting, 419 B Street, Bldg 29718, 3rd Floor, Fort Gordon, GA 30905-5719
- ZIP Code
- 30905-5719
- Solicitation Number
- LMR
- Archive Date
- 11/27/2013
- Point of Contact
- Suzanne Mattingly, 706-791-1825
- E-Mail Address
-
MICC - Fort Gordon
(suzanne.e.mattingly.civ@mail.mil)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- The 7th Signal Command (Theater) (7SC(T))is hosting an Industry Day and is seeking maximum attendance from industry partners interested in providing Land Mobile Radio capabilities to the United States Army. This anticipated half-day event will be conducted on/around Fort Gordon, Georgia, located just outside Augusta, Georgia on/about October 2013. The exact date and venue will be provided in a later supplemental notice. The mission of the 7th Signal Command (Theater) is to quote mark Provide and defend network capabilities and services for Army, Joint, Interagency and Multinational forces in the Western Hemisphere to enable operations and battle command quote mark. Further, the 7SC(T) plans, controls, and supports land mobile radio (LMR) operations to enable homeland defense, civil support, and organization operations and training for geographic regions and assigned installations. The 7th Signal Command (Theater) is seeking to exchange information with industry in order to improve mutual understanding of government operational and life cycle support requirements for Land Mobile Radio Networks and services and industry capabilities to provide same. Briefings will be presented to improve the Industry's understanding of the Government requirements for professional and technical support services. It is also the Government's goal to understand industry's capabilities in performance of professional and technical services contracts during the entire life cycle (acquisition, procurement, operations, maintenance, and termination). The intent of this RFI is to share ideas on industry best practices to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of the US Army's delivery of land mobile radio services to each of its installations. The 7th Signal Command (Theater) will not accept any paper or electronic submissions from any vendor prior to this event. This is to save our industry partners the expense of submitting information not based on the precise government intent, which will be briefed, explained and discussed at the forum. Submissions prior to this event will be discarded. Vendors will be allowed to submit paper and electronic information in accordance with guidance to be provided in the supplemental notice. This Request for Information (RFI) is issued solely for informational and planning purposes, and does not constitute an Invitation for Bids, Request for Proposals, or Request for Quotations. In accordance with FAR 15.201(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract, nor do they affect a potential offerer's ability to respond to any future synopsis/solicitation which may or may not follow or restrict the U.S. Government's eventual acquisition approach. Additionally, the U.S. Government will not provide reimbursement for any information that may be submitted in response to this RFI. Respondents are solely responsible for all expenses associated with responding to this RFI. Interested vendors responding to this RFI may provide capability information for individual aspects of this requirement or for an entire solution. Respondents will not be notified of any results derived from a review of the information provided, however information gathered may be utilized for technical and acquisition purposes. Time permitting and depending upon the information received, individual vendors may request one-on-one conferences for more detailed discussions or product demonstrations. The U.S. Government will not pay for any costs associated with such discussions or demonstration(s) of any products. Interested parties will indicate their desire to attend with approximate number of attendees via email to the POC listed below NLT 13 Sept 2013. Participating companies will be limited to no more than 3 attendees each due to the limited size of available venues. Questions for consideration by industry partners: Procurement/Acquisition. 1) What is the most cost effective method for procuring LMR systems/services for Army installations across CONUS? Please provide rationale for method. 2)What is the most cost effective method for procuring end-user LMR devices for Army installations and units/agencies/organizations across CONUS? Please provide rationale for method. 3)Given that competition is a priority for the Army when seeking goods and services, what is the best method to guarantee competition? Maintenance/Operations. 1)Given the Army's and 7th SC(T) Command desire to use a quote mark tiered quote mark model of incident response, and to reduce maintenance costs, what is the best method to structure maintenance response? (Tier 0 - Customer fix; Tier 1 - NEC/DOIM response; Tier 2 - Brigade response; Tier 3 - Theater or CONUS Network Operations Security Center (CTNOSC) response; Tier 4 - Vendor) 2)How would you design a system to allow a theater, brigade or regional view of the status of LMR networks on installations? Currently, only the installation can view the status. 3)How would you structure government Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) tracking of services? Currently the maintenance quote mark tickets quote mark are only visible within the vendor system unless the government inputs tickets separately. 4)How would you structure software (including information assurance) maintenance? 5)Noting that the requirement from AR 25-2 is to report IAVM compliance via government channels to the DAA and/or system owner, how would you structure obtaining and applying patches, scanning, and reporting compliance? Life cycle replacement/Upgrade/Modernization 1)Currently the upgrade model being used by the Army is the quote mark forklift quote mark model - moving installation by installation and performing a 100% upgrade of all components of an LMR network, from user devices to master controllers. This is capital expensive and does not allow for upgrades to keep up with the pace of technology. What is a better way of upgrading LMR systems, keeping within the current funding profile, while keeping pace with technology? 2)The Army desires to reduce the number of LMR networks and increase operational effectiveness in CONUS by connecting multiple installations into regions. The regions will have geographically separate and fully redundant control sites with each subordinate installation dual-homed to each control site. The end state being that if an outage occurs which would normally cause a site to go into site-trunking, the redundant path and/or controller would quote mark take over quote mark and prevent the loss of full trunking capability for a victim site. What implications should be considered by the government in pursuing this strategy? Technical/standards 1)How would you enable full interoperability between disparate vendor equipment to allow for higher level functionality (above standard P25 parameters)(such as OTAR, OTAP, etc)? 2)What are the limitations in utilizing disparate manufacturer end-user devices? Training 1)What is the proper level of training for users, system administrators, maintainers given that the army intent is to perform more services quote mark in house quote mark to save resources? 2)What would you suggest for training/equipping regional-based government maintenance response teams (in accordance with tiered response explained above)? POC for this action is: Suzanne Mattingly Contracting Officer Suzanne.e.mattingly.civ@mail.mil
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