B09_SA_2_Q_A_0002.xlsx
XLSX spreadsheet 17 KB Posted
- Attached to
- Network Connectivity Fiber Network Backbone Federal contract opportunity
- Solicitation number
- 140D0426Q0575
About this file
This file is a Question and Answer (Q&A) document from a solicitation addressing the National Cancer Institute's fiber network backbone modernization. The document clarifies technical requirements, transition logistics, and service expectations for establishing a dedicated dark-fiber metropolitan area network (MPON) connecting NCI sites in Maryland and Northern Virginia to cloud services.
Key service requirements include: establishing two redundant 100 Gbps logical connections between Fort Detrick and Bethesda (terminating separately at Buildings 10 and 12A), implementing physical and logical diversity across separate conduits, carriers, and facilities, providing AWS Direct Connect and future GCP Interconnect cloud connectivity, and maintaining 99.99% monthly availability per service with no maintenance exclusions—the redundant design must enable maintenance without service interruption. The contractor will furnish Layer 1 optical transport infrastructure as a dedicated dark-fiber solution while the Government manages Layer 2 and above; the Government will provide inter-building fiber between Bethesda buildings and between Shady Grove data centers. All existing dark fiber and equipment are incumbent-owned; the new contract must be delivered and accepted by January 2027 to support seamless transition from the current Leidos FFRDC contract. Contractors must provide FIPS 140-3 encryption for Layer 1 services, achieve FedRamp certification or develop a security authorization package for moderate NIST baseline compliance, and maintain U.S.-based Network Operations Center and Security Operations Center personnel—OEM support, RMA processing, and ancillary vendor functions may utilize global resources. Pricing must separately identify one-time construction, equipment, activation, and transition costs plus recurring managed-service charges by period, with future capacity increases, 400 Gbps roadmap items, and non-base-period services subject to separate contract modifications.
View the file
Other files for this federal contract opportunity
| File | Type | Posted |
|---|---|---|
| Sol_140D0426Q0575_Amd_0004.pdf | ||
| Sol_140D0426Q0575_Amd_0003.pdf | ||
| Sol_140D0426Q0575_Amd_0002.pdf | ||
| B09_SA_1_Q_A_0001.xlsx | XLSX spreadsheet | |
| B09_SA_1_0001.pdf | ||
| B09_SA_1_Attachment_1_-_Contract_Certifications_and_Provisions_0001.pdf | ||
| B09_SA_1_Current_MPON_Topology_0001.pdf | ||
| Sol_140D0426Q0575_Amd_0001.pdf | ||
| B09_SA_1_Quality_Assurance_Surveillance_Plan_0001.pdf | ||
| Sol_140D0426Q0575.pdf | ||
| B08_SOL_Fiber.pdf | ||
| B08_SOL_Attachment_3_-_Appendix_A.pdf | ||
| B08_SOL_Attachment_2_-_VPAT2_5Rev_508_February2025.pdf | ||
| B08_SOL_Attachment_1_-_Contract_Certifications_and_Provisions.pdf | ||
| B08_SOL_Attachment_4_-_Quality_Assurance_Surveillance_Plan.pdf |
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Text version
Sheet1
| Solicitation Reference | Question | Government Response |
| Quote Instr. Factor 1; PWS Tasks 2.7, 2.10; Appendix A §§A.2–A.3 | To support a firm-fixed-price quote and a low-risk transition, will the Government provide to all offerors before quote submission the current as-built topology, circuit/fiber inventory, carrier/provider and contract information, service demarcations and building entrances, route-diversity information, equipment/optics/spares/licenses/maintenance inventory, cloud-port and cross-connect inventory, current utilization/capacity data, and significant outage history? Will equal-access site surveys, virtual walkthroughs, and/or incumbent technical exchanges be offered? If material information is released after the question deadline, will the Government extend the quote due date? | See MPON Topology |
| PWS §2.0; Tasks 2.2, 2.3, 2.10 | Please identify all existing Government-owned, Government-leased, incumbent-provided, or third-party assets and services that will remain available to the awardee at transition, including fiber/conduit, circuits or wavelengths, racks and power, cross-connects, cloud ports, optical/network equipment, licenses, spares, maintenance agreements, and carrier contracts. For each, please state ownership, remaining term, assignability/novation, recurring charges, and responsibility for transfer, early-termination, or deinstallation costs. Please also confirm whether newly acquired service equipment may remain contractor-owned or contractor-leased and its required disposition at contract expiration. | N/A |
| PWS Task 2.5; PRS §5.0; Appendix A §A.3 | For every service and capacity identified in Appendix A §A.3 and the Performance Requirements Summary §5.0, please identify whether it is: (a) currently operational and to be transitioned; (b) a new build or activation required during the base period; (c) a future or optional service to be separately ordered; or (d) planning/evaluation only. For each service, please provide the required ready-for-service date, acceptance/SLA start date, and applicable base-year, option-year, or separate-order pricing treatment. | Will need to be built out under the new contract. Existing fiber and equipment is the property of the incumbant. |
| PWS Task 2.5; PRS §5.0; Appendix A §A.3 | Appendix A §A.3 identifies planned 2×100 Gbps connectivity from Fort Detrick to Bethesda, while PRS §5.0 identifies future 2×100 Gbps connectivity from ATRF to Bethesda. PWS Task 2.5 refers only to 'Frederick.' Please confirm the correct A-end, B-end, quantity, implementation status, required service date, and pricing obligation. | Currently we have no logical connections between Bethesda and Frederick. The new contract should include two 100 Gbps logical connections between Frederick and Bethesda in the initial buildout.. There will be two connections: one between Ft. Detrick and Building 10 in Bethesda, the other between Ft. Detrick and Building 12A in Bethesda. One of those links would physically traverse the MPON from Ft. Detrick through the ATRF and Shady Grove, to Bethesda. The other would take the diverse route around the other direction on the MPON, from Ft. Detrick through the Northern Virginia locations to Bethesda. |
| RFQ §1 place of performance; Appendix A §A.2; PRS §5.0 | Are Bethesda Building 10 and Building 12A separate required backbone service endpoints, or do they represent a single Bethesda campus service location? Please identify which existing and planned links terminate at each building, the required number of demarcations and equipment stacks, and whether any inter-building connectivity between Buildings 10 and 12A is within contractor scope. | They represent a single Bethesda campus location. The 40Gbps links terminate there--one in Building 10 and the other in Building 12A. Connectivity between Buildings 10 and 12A: the contractor will need to be able to support the required port types and speeds for connectivity between these buildings, but the contractor is not responsible for the fiber between buildings. NCI/NIH will provide the fiber between these buildings (just like we will do for the two data centers at SG) |
| PWS Task 2.2 | Please confirm that the Contractor may satisfy Task 2.2 through any combination of contractor-owned facilities, leased dark fiber or wavelengths, commercially available lit optical/Ethernet services, third-party carrier facilities, and subcontractor-provided assets, provided the prime Contractor remains fully accountable for all PWS performance, security, path-diversity, and SLA requirements. Please identify any link that must use a specific transport medium, dedicated facility, carrier, or contractor-owned asset. | The requirement is for dedicated dark fiber. See MPON Topology |
| PWS Tasks 2.2, 2.5, 2.8; Appendix A §A.4; PRS §5.0 | Please define the minimum physical and logical diversity required for each redundant connection pair, including any requirements for separate building entrances, conduits, manholes/poles, central offices or carrier hubs, optical shelves/amplifiers, data centers/meet-me rooms, carriers, and cloud on-ramps. Please identify acceptable shared-risk segments and the evidence required at proposal, service acceptance, and during operations to demonstrate continuing diversity. | Physical and logical diversity required for each redundant connection pair, including any separate building entrances (where possible), conduits, manholes/poles, central offices or carrier hubs, optical shelves/amplifiers, data centers/meet-me rooms, carriers, and cloud on-ramps. |
| PWS Task 2.2; §§5.2, 6.0 | For each Maryland and Northern Virginia location, please identify the rack/cabinet space, A/B power, grounding, HVAC, pathways/conduit, inside plant, entrance facilities, patch panels, and cross-connects that the Government or facility operator will provide. Please identify responsibility for permits, rights-of-way, construction, restoration, colocation and cross-connect fees, and confirm installation and 24×7 repair access/escort arrangements at each site. | This will be provided after award. |
| PWS Tasks 2.5–2.6; PRS §5.0; Appendix A §§A.3, A.5 | Please provide the current AWS Direct Connect physical and logical topology for the Production and Lab services, including source NCI site(s), exact Northern Virginia facilities or contractor-selection criteria, port speeds and ownership, cloud accounts, letters of authorization, cross-connects, virtual interfaces, VLAN/BGP/ASN/IP responsibilities, and recurring cloud-provider or colocation charges. Please identify which components will remain in place and which must be furnished, transitioned, or replaced by the awardee. | See MPON Topology |
| PWS Tasks 2.5–2.6; PRS §5.0; Appendix A §§A.3, A.5 | Please confirm the required GCP Interconnect topology, including the source site(s), number and capacity of links from each source, Production/Lab or other segmentation, Northern Virginia facilities and interconnect partner or contractor-selection criteria, port/cross-connect/LOA/VLAN/BGP responsibilities, required ready-for-service dates, and whether these links are base-period obligations or future services to be separately ordered. | Future GCP Cloud Interconnects would mirror the current AWS Direct Connects. See MPON Topology |
| PWS Tasks 2.3, 2.5, 2.6 | Please define the service demarcation at each backbone and cloud location and confirm which party furnishes and manages the optical transport, Layer 2 handoff, Layer 3 routing, segmentation, and encryption edge. Please identify any Government-furnished routers/firewalls, Government-owned IP address space, ASNs, VLANs/VRFs, routing policies, and route-advertisement constraints. | There will be no Government Furnished Equipment for the offeror. The offeror will provide a layer 1 MPON. The govervnment handles layer 2 and above. |
| PWS Task 2.6; PRS §5.0; Appendix A §A.5 | Please define the required end-to-end encryption boundary for each backbone and cloud service, including the required encryption endpoints and whether encryption must remain intact across intermediate routing or transport domains. Please identify acceptable FIPS-validated implementation types, required validation level/version, throughput and failover expectations, key/certificate ownership, Government PKI or HSM integration, and key rotation/recovery responsibilities. | FIPS 140-3 for this opportunity as FIPS 140-2 validations have moved to the historical list at NIH. The offeror is providing an encrypted layer service between the awardee's devices. No encryption expected betwwen awardee's devices and the government's devices. |
| PWS Task 2.6; §3.0 deliverables; PRS §5.0 | Please identify the applicable NIH/NCI security policies and NIST control baseline, the system authorization boundary and current Authority to Operate status, whether the contractor solution must obtain a new or modified authorization, and the specific RMF/security artifacts, assessment activities, continuous-monitoring, vulnerability-scanning, patching, logging, retention, POA&M, and reporting requirements and due dates. Please identify Government security tools and interfaces with which the Contractor must integrate. | FIPS 199 system cattegorization is moderate. NIST security control baseline would be moderate. Required artifacts would be FedRamp certification or A&A Package including SSP, Security Assessment Plan, and Security Assesment Rerport. |
| PWS Tasks 2.4, 2.8; PRS §5.0; QASP §4 | Please define how the 99.99% availability requirement is measured: per individual connection, redundant connection pair, end-to-end service, or aggregate backbone; the measurement points and system of record; the calculation period; the date SLA measurement begins after acceptance; and the treatment of approved maintenance, Government-caused events, force majeure, facility or utility outages, cloud-provider events, and other dependencies outside the Contractor's control. | See Section 4, Paragraph 5 of the solicitation. |
No need for maintenance exclusions from the 99.99% calculation as the solution should include the redundancy to allow for maintenance and the service availability for the services listed above. Government-caused events, force majeure, facility or utility outages, cloud-provider events, and other dependencies outside the Contractor's control don't count against the 99.99%. The expectation is each service is 99.990 or better.
| PWS Tasks 2.4, 2.8; PRS §5.0; Appendix A §A.4; QASP §4 | Please provide incident priority definitions; clock-start and clock-stop rules; notification, escalation, and update intervals; restoration or approved-workaround targets for Priority 1 and other priorities; the numeric RTO and RPO targets the Contractor must certify; onsite dispatch/arrival requirements by location; and the Government official authorized to approve a workaround. | The 99.99% availability is is measured per service per calendar month. Government caused outages and Force majeure are excluded. Offeror can determine how they would meet the 99.99% threashold. |
| Quote Instr. Factor 1; PWS Task 2.10; §3.0 deliverables | Please identify the incumbent provider(s), current contract and service expiration dates, required phase-in duration and full-performance date, expected parallel operations, incumbent cooperation and access to documentation/configurations, assignability of circuits/ports/licenses, cutover or change-freeze windows, and transition acceptance criteria. Please confirm whether all parallel-service, migration, early-termination, and deinstallation costs must be included in the base-period firm-fixed price. | BSO is managing the current MPON through a FFRDC with Leidos. All equipment and dark fiber is owned/leased by the incumbant. BSO's contract through the FFRDC ends in January 2027. The new MPON needs to be delivered and accepted in time to support a seemless transition. See Page 2 of the QASP |
| Quote Instr. Volume 3; PWS §§3.0, 5.1–5.2 | Because the RFQ uses a single item while the PWS includes existing services, planned builds, equipment, transition, and future/evaluation items, will the Government provide or accept a link-level pricing schedule that separately identifies one-time/nonrecurring construction, equipment, activation, and transition costs and recurring managed-service charges by period? Please state how future/evaluation items are to be priced and when invoicing begins for each service—contract start, installation, or Government acceptance. | Contract modifications if necessary and appropriate. |
| PWS Task 2.5; Appendix A §§A.1, A.3 | Please confirm that sites, links, cloud connections, capacity increases, and major equipment additions not expressly identified as base-period obligations will be separately scoped, ordered, and funded by contract modification. Please also confirm whether 400 Gbps is limited to a technical roadmap/planning narrative or whether the base solution must include deployable 400G-ready facilities or equipment. If readiness or activation is required, please identify routes, dates, interfaces, acceptance criteria, and pricing treatment. | Correct sites, links, cloud connections, capacity increases, and major equipment additions not expressly identified as base-period obligations will be separately scoped, ordered, and funded by contract modification. Also correct that 400 Gbps is limited to a technical roadmap/planning narrative. |
| PWS Task 2.9; PRS §5.0; Appendix A §A.6 | Please clarify the scope of the U.S.-only service-delivery requirement for subcontractors, carriers, cloud/colocation providers, and OEMs. Do the restrictions apply to OEM technical assistance, RMA, manufacturing/logistics, and personnel who do not access Government systems, network-management tools, or Government data, or only to personnel performing contract operations, engineering, monitoring, on-call support, escalation, and remote access? | The U.S.-based performance restriction apply to the the NOC & SOC. It is not required for OEM technical assistance centers, vendor escalation support, software support, RMA processing, and other ancillary supplier support that may use global resources, and define whether Government data includes telemetry, logs, configurations, tickets, metadata, performance data, and diagnostic information. |
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