Operations, Maintenance, and Sustainment Engineering Services for the Rescue 21 Coastal (R21-C) System
Added: Oct 13, 2015 5:58 pm J&A Statutory Authority: FAR 6.302-1 - Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.The United States Coast Guard (USCG) intends to award a sole source contract to General Dynamics Mission Systems (GMDS), 8201 E. McDowell Road, Scottsdale, AZ 85257, for tee years. This contract will provide the technical effort to split the current system into a Radio Subsystem and Direction Finding/Digital Selective Calling (DF/DSC) Subsystem as well as continue sustainment of the legacy Rescue 21 Coastal system.The legacy R21 Coastal system provides simultaneous VHF/UHF communications, direction finding (DF), and digital selective calling (DSC) functionality for the Coast Guard to communicate with maritime users in the continental United States, Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico.Sustainment of the legacy R21 Coastal system includes all management, supervision, engineering services, personnel, labor, materials, and equipment required to perform organizational and depot level maintenance, including information assurance, system design maintenance, engineering escalation, technology refreshment, and obsolescence management.The legacy R21 Coastal system consists of the following:• 32 CG Sector (SCC) equipment suites (Backroom servers & (3) operator consoles per Sector)• 167 CG Station equipment suites with (1) operator console per Station/MSO/MSU• 258 Remote Fixed Facilities (RFF's) with typical configuration of 5 VHF transceivers, 1 UHF transceiver, voice & data servers, digital processors, data switches, RF filters, RF interference mitigation, Direction Finding, equipment huts, tower, tower lighting, environmental sensor, antennas, and standby power generation subsystems.• 4 Disaster Recovery (DR) mobile equipment suites (portable RFF, portable tower/antenna, portable satellite communication suites, & portable generator suites)• 1 Disaster Recovery (DR) R21-C Sector Command Center equipment suite at CG OSC Martinsburg W VA• 1 Rescue 21 Coastal Operator Training Simulation suite with 60 student work stations at TRACEN Petaluma, CASustainment of the legacy R21-Coastal system shall ensure the R21 critical functions listed below are provided at the specified availability, measured monthly within a Coast Guard Sector Area-of-Operational Responsibility (AOR).Rescue 21 Critical Functions Operational AvailabilityReceipt of distress and emergency alerts (VHF-FM Ch 16) 99.5%Digital Selective Calling (DSC) data 99.5%VHF-FM Maritime Voice Communications 99.5%UHF Voice Communications 99.5%Protected Communications 99.5%Caller Position Location. Single Line-of-Bearing (LOB) Information) 99.5%Archiving/Recording Functions 99.5%The USCG will technically refresh soon-to-be obsolete radios at its 258 Remote Fixed Facilities (RFFs) during the tee year period, replacing analogue and proprietary interfaces with Digital Fixed Station Interface (DFSI) radios conforming to the TIA-102.BAHA standard. These radios will be competitively procured by the Coast Guard. Radios to be replaced include mixed-mode UHF (qty. 1), mixed mode VHF (qty. 2), a dedicated Channel 16 VHF Guard radio, and a dedicated Channel 70 VHF DSC radio.Upon completion of the tee year contract, the Coast Guard will award a follow-on five year contract to GDMS to support CG Sectors that have not been transitioned to the new Radio Subsystem and assist in cut-over of the Radio Control Subsystem and DF/DSC Subsystem at all 32 USCG Sectors. Deployment and installation of the Radio Control Subsystem to all USCG Sectors will be competitively procured. The radio control subsystems for the USCG Sectors will also conform to open standards and will be competitively procured. Support of the Sectors will transition from the sole source arrangement with GDMS to the awardee of a concurrent competitive support contract that will increase in size during this five year period as transition progresses.The DF/DSC Subsystem, designed to correlate direction finding lines of bearing and received audio while reducing spurious reports, will continue to be supported by GDMS as it remains proprietary to GDMS. This subsystem hosts the proprietary source code upon which the GDMS R21-C technical solution is based.Sustainment of the existing Rescue 21 Coastal System will be sole sourced during the tee year period due to its integration with GDMS support services and the proprietary nature of critical software elements. The existing Customer Care Center is integrated with user authentication, support, and depot services critical to operations. Status of the existing system is monitored, and corrections made remotely, using a proprietary software system. Media Services software, which manages all calls and is found in all elements of the system, is also proprietary to GDMS. The existing Customer Care Center is highly integrated with engineering, support, and depot services. Availability of critical capabilities must continue to be maintained at the 99.5% level (receipt of distress and emergency alerts, DSC alerts, VHF-FM maritime voice communications, UHF voice communications, position location and audio correlation) or the 95% level (protected communications) during the eight-year transition period while the Rescue 21-C system is technically transformed to a system that can largely be supported tough competition.Current Government owned system technical information is limited to site drawings, COTS parts lists, high-level hardware and software design descriptions, operator manuals, and a system-level maintenance manual. Complete source code and detailed information on integrated support systems are not available. Note that system maintenance is highly dependent upon remote software image loading and equipment configuration provided by the Customer Care Center. Software and hardware changes to the legacy R21 Coastal system, which are necessary to meet system obsolescence and Coast Guard information assurance requirements, are validated prior to field deployment using tee government-owned ‘development' and ‘test' equipment suites located in Scottsdale, AZ. An additional test suite in Scottsdale AZ is connected to the a ‘Test Domain' on the Coast Guard's private data network (i.e. CGONE) to ensure proposed information assurance patches and upgrades to the R21 Coastal system do not adversely impact CG enterprise services prior to installation of these changes at CG Sectors.This Sources Sought Notice is issued solely to determine whether there are any other sources that could meet the Coast Guard's technical and schedule requirements for modification and sustainment of the Rescue 21 Coastal system. The Coast Guard believes that utilizing another Contractor to modify and sustain the existing system prior to this planned transition would cause unacceptable delays in the transition to competition and would negatively impact the availability of a safety-of-life system, putting lives at risk.Companies that believe they have the capability to sustain the existing system, with no degradation in availability, must submit a capability statement detailing how they would gain access to the support baselines and proprietary monitoring system, or replicate those services. They must detail how all modification and sustainment capabilities will be fully operational by July 2016. Companies must also detail how they would gain access to proprietary GDMS software elements, or reproduce existing software, to support division into a Radio Subsystem and DF/DSC Subsystem. Companies must explain their design, integration, verification, testing and certification functions and provide a timeline to meet the schedule; they must also explain how an otherwise acceptable solution from the company would be price competitive with GDMS. The capability statement shall also include the company's Dun and Bradstreet number, a discussion of any previous experience similar to this requirement, and a point of contact in the event the Coast Guard requires additional information.This notice does not constitute a Request for Proposal (RFP) or a promise to issue an RFP in the future. Proposals submitted based on this notice will not be accepted. Capability statements received prior to the closing date and time will be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether a competitive procurement is possible.Please submit information via email to the Point of Contact Listed below no later than 5:00PM EST on 10/27/2015.Contracting Office: Department of Homeland Security, United States Coast Guard (USCG), Telecommunications and Information Systems Command (TISCOM)Point of Contact(s):Primary: Pam Boscovich, Contracting Officer, Phone 703-414-9653, Email: pamela.m.boscovich@uscg.mil. HSCG79-15-I-R21CST Department of Homeland Security US Coast Guard
10/13/15, 5:58 PM