AWARD
99 -- Integrative Materials Design Center (iMdc) Yearly Subscription
- Notice Date
- 2/10/2014
- Notice Type
- Award Notice
- NAICS
- 541712
— Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Biotechnology)
- Contracting Office
- ACC - New Jersey, Center for Contracting and Commerce, Building 10 Phipps RD, Picatinny Arsenal, NJ 07806-5000
- ZIP Code
- 07806-5000
- Solicitation Number
- W15QKN-14-P-0002
- Archive Date
- 3/12/2014
- Point of Contact
- Giuseppe Tropiano, 518-266-5094
- E-Mail Address
-
ACC - New Jersey
(giuseppe.tropiano.civ@mail.mil)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Award Number
- W15QKN-14-P-0002
- Award Date
- 12/24/2013
- Awardee
- WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE (041508581) <br> 100 INSTITUTE RD <br> WORCESTER, MA 01609-2280
- Award Amount
- $125,000.00
- Line Number
- 0001
- Description
- This contract action was accomplished using other than competitive procedures because there is only one responsible source and no other supplies or service will satisfy agency requirements (FAR 6.302-1). See posted J&A for further information. On 29 August 2013, this Office, Army Contracting Command- New Jersey, Emerging Technologies (ACC-NJ-ET) received a request from U.S. Armaments Research, Development, and Engineering Command (ARDEC) - Ben t Laboratories, located at Watervliet Arsenal, Watervliet, New York for the subscription with the Integrative Materials Design Center (iMdc). The objective of this research center is to provide subscriptions to industry and Government personnel in order to fund research projects focused on preventing failure and improving the performance of structures through: evaluating the multi-scale behavior of materials, optimizing new materials and processing practices, and establishing microstructure/property/performance relationships. Specific research projects could involve fatigue testing, fracture mechanics evaluation, thermo-mechanical testing, additive manufacturing, non-destructive evaluation, etc. on metallic and composite materials of significant importance. The Independent Government Cost Estimate (IGCE) technical POC has determined this procurement's estimated value to be no more than $125,000.00. Therefore, the government anticipates using the Simplified Acquisition Procedures for this effort. Using Market Research and the rationale provided for in this Sole Source Justification, it is the intent of this Office to award a New Firm-Fixed Price Purchase Order to the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), 100 Institute Road Worcester, MA 01609-2280. The authority cited is 10 U.S.C. 2304 (c)(1), Only One Responsible Source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements as implemented by FAR 6.302-1(a)(2)(ii). A Sole-source notice will be publicized on to the Federal Business Opportunities website (http://www.fedbizopps.gov) as required by subpart 5.2. The Integrative Materials Design Center (iMdc) at Worcester Polytechnic Institute was established in 2007 by Dr. Diana Lados as a one-of-a-kind consortium of government, industry, and academic partners. The objective of this research center is to provide subscriptions to industry and Government personnel in order to fund research projects focused on preventing failure and improving the performance of structures through: evaluating the multi-scale behavior of materials, optimizing new materials and processing practices, and establishing microstructure/property/performance relationships. There are other government-industry-university consortiums that exist. However, they did not contain the technical breadth and scope of WPI's iMdc consortium which encompasses fatigue behavior, fracture mechanics, novel materials development, material processing, material design, additive manufacturing, etc. The iMdc is a unique and one-of-a-kind consortium that is directly applicable to the current ARDEC mission. This determined our recommendation to award Sole-source to Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Worcester Polytechnic Institute is the only institution that can perform the tasks in the listed SOW due to the following reasons: -WPI's Integrative Materials Design Center (iMdc) is a unique university / industry / government consortium that participates in research projects of direct interest to DoD/ARDEC. Subscribers have direct input into the research performed by WPI students. The subscription leverages funding in order to perform basic and applied materials research that would otherwise not be able to be performed. An example is a current iMdc project on quote mark Additive Manufacturing: Microstructure, Properties, and Damage Mechanisms quote mark. This project falls within the ARDEC mission and is performing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fundamental research on additive manufacturing. All data and licensing rights are available to Subscribers at no cost. -It is critical that scarce R&D dollars be leveraged in order to perform fundamental materials research of interest to DoD/ARDEC. The work performed by iMdc is aligned with ARDEC's mission and enables materials research (e.g. related to fatigue, fracture mechanics, materials processing, manufacturing science, computational materials engineering, etc.) that would otherwise not be able to be performed due to funding limitations. -Multiple projects are performed by iMdc each year under the cost of a Subscription. If these projects were to be performed at other university/universities, multiple contracts would need to be awarded. This would take an inordinate amount of time and would cost many times more than if the work were to be performed at iMdc (in which the Subscription dollars are leveraged to provide a much greater quote mark return on investment quote mark ). -If other universities are capable of performing this unique and specific materials R&D, multiple contracts would have to be written to perform each project. The anticipated value of each project performed by iMdc is $250K. Over a five year period, it is anticipated that 10 projects shall be performed by iMdc. The time to prepare and award the 10 contracts to other universities is estimated to be 30 man months. This would cost an estimated $2.5M if performed elsewhere. The leveraging capability of iMdc ($125K/5 years) enables world class materials research at an extremely affordable price that cannot be duplicated elsewhere. In addition; multiple contracts would need to be awarded if the work was performed at other universities, delays of six months to two years are anticipated because of the additional manpower and time needed to process multiple contracts. These delays are unacceptable because they would not be able to keep tempo with the pace at which new materials solutions are needed at ARDEC to support the Warfighter. For example, a current project at iMdc on additive manufacturing will enable novel processed such as Laser Engineered Net Shaping (LENS) to be performed on critical armament components in order to reduce scrap, reduce the logistics burden, extend life, and reduce total life cycle costs. If such a project were delayed by contracting with another university, there would be a six month to two year delay in generating the critical materials data needed to certify the process. This could result in delays in production schedules, potential materiel shortages, and would adversely affect Warfighter readiness.
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