Questions_140G0326Q0205_1_0001.xlsx

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SATELLITE SHORELINE PROCESSING SYS.
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140G0326Q0205
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This is a Questions and Answers document for RFQ 140G0326Q0205, a Total Small Business set-aside under NAICS 541511 (size standard $34M) issued by the Department of the Interior US Geological Survey Office of Acquisitions and Grants for development of a Satellite Shoreline Processing System. The RFQ was released with quotations due September 22, 2026, and contemplates an anticipated award date to be confirmed, with actual performance dates subject to change based on the award date.

The contract requires development of a satellite shoreline detection and processing system based on forking the existing open-source CoastSeg codebase for operational deployment on USGS Advanced Research Computing (ARC) infrastructure. The 20-month effort is structured as six firm fixed-price CLINs: a Strategic Plan (Deliverable 1), regional-scale satellite imagery download and shoreline detection software (Deliverables 2-3), validation on a 50+ km U.S. coastline reach (Deliverable 4), USGS code review and publication (Deliverable 5), and training (Deliverable 6), with deliverables due at 6-month, 6-month, and 8-month intervals. Work shall be performed at contractor facilities with optional travel; the Government furnishes up to two laptops, PIV cards, ARC compute and storage resources, lidar/photogrammetry validation datasets, and Landsat imagery (Sentinel-2 is optional). Payments may be made quarterly or upon deliverable/milestone acceptance. The quotation requires a signed SF-18, current SAM.gov representations and certifications, three references, and resumes for all key personnel demonstrating relevant experience; no page limit or specific format requirements apply, though PDFs are preferred. Evaluation criteria emphasize past performance and experience over capability and price, with subcontractor experience eligible for consideration despite the absence of 52.219-14 limitations on subcontracting. U.S. citizenship is required for personnel receiving PIV cards or ARC access, and all AI-assisted development tools must comply with USGS, DOI, and federal government policies.

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Attachment / DocumentPage or SectionQuestionAnswer
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, SF-18 and Continuation Sheetsp.2, question and quotation instructions; SAM.gov notice, Contact InformationPage 2 directs questions and quotations by email to tracy_huot@ios.doi.gov, while the SAM.gov notice lists thuot@usgs.gov for the primary point of contact. Please confirm that tracy_huot@ios.doi.gov is the address for the quotation, and whether quoters should also copy thuot@usgs.gov.tracy_huot@ios.doi.gov
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, SF-18 and Continuation Sheetsp.1 Block 11; 52.212-1 (incorporated by reference, p.10); 52.212-2 p.14The RFQ does not state how the quotation should be organized beyond the UEI, the signed SF-18, signed amendments and at least three references. Please state whether the Government expects separate technical and capability, experience and past performance, and price volumes or files, and whether a page limit applies to any part of the quotation or to the quotation as a whole.no page limit or format requirement.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, SF-18 and Continuation Sheetsp.1 Block 11; 52.212-1Please state any required font, minimum font size, page margins and line spacing, whether tables, charts and graphics count toward any page limit, and whether a smaller font size is permitted inside tables and figures.no page limit or format requirement.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, SF-18 and Continuation Sheetsp.2, quotation instructionsPlease state the required file format for each part of the quotation (for example searchable PDF), any file naming convention, the largest email attachment size the receiving mailbox accepts, whether a quotation may be sent across more than one email, and whether the Government will acknowledge receipt.PDF preferred.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, SF-18 and Continuation Sheetsp.1 SF-18 Note and Blocks 13 to 16; Clauses p.15, 52.204-19On the SF-18, neither box is checked in the note that additional provisions and representations are or are not attached. Please confirm that the quoter's current SAM.gov representations and certifications satisfy the representation requirement, that a completed and signed SF-18 is required with the quotation, and the minimum number of days the quotation must remain valid.current sam reps apply
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkVII Period of Performance, p.8; CLIN periods, pp.2-3Section VII adjusts the start to a 20-month period if award is made after October 1, 2026, while CLINs 00010 to 00060 carry fixed dates. With quotations due September 22, 2026, please state the anticipated award date and confirm that the CLIN periods and the 6, 6 and 8 month deliverable intervals in Section VI shift with the actual start date.actual dates are subject to change based on date of award.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, SF-18 and Continuation Sheetsp.2, questions instructionWill the Government post its answers to all interested parties as an amendment on SAM.gov, and if the answers are posted within three business days of the 5:00 PM PDT September 22, 2026 due date, will the Government extend the quotation due date so the answers can be reflected in the quotations?yes
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, SF-18 and Continuation SheetsCLINs 00010 to 00060, pp.2-3CLINs 00010 to 00060 show no quantity or unit, and the CLIN 00010 description is truncated ('Satellite Shoreline Processing System St'). Please confirm that each CLIN is priced as a single firm fixed price lot for the matching SOW Section VI deliverable, that CLIN 00010 is Deliverable 1, the Strategic Plan, and that the total evaluated price is the sum of the six CLINs.all is firm fixed priced.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, SF-18 and Continuation SheetsCLINs 00050 and 00060, p.3; Clauses pp.15-17All six CLINs form one 20-month period with no options, and CLINs 00050 and 00060 begin October 1, 2027, in a later fiscal year. Please confirm whether all CLINs will be fully funded at award, or whether later CLINs will be subject to the availability of funds or incrementally funded.all made on same award
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkVI Deliverables and Acceptance, p.7; Invoice Processing Platform clause, p.18Section VI ties payment to Government acceptance of each deliverable. Please state the Government's review and acceptance period for each deliverable, and whether invoicing is limited to the six deliverable acceptances or partial payments against defined milestones within a CLIN are acceptable over the 20 months.Payments can be made either quarterly or as a deliverable or milestone is completed and accepted.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, SF-18 and Continuation Sheetsp.1 Block 11; CLINs pp.2-3Does the Government require the price quotation to show the labor categories, hours and rates behind each CLIN, or a lump sum per CLIN only? If the Government has an estimated level of effort or staffing profile for this 20-month effort, please share it so quotations are priced on a common basis.This is firm-fixed price. Please submit proposal for the six line items and add your total price of completing the project.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkVI Deliverable 1 and Deliverable 6, pp.7-8; VIII Place of Performance, p.8Section VIII places work at the Contractor's facility with virtual meetings, and Deliverable 6 calls for one virtual training session. Please confirm that all work may be performed remotely at contractor facilities with no on-site presence required at PCMSC in Santa Cruz, and that no travel is required, including for the Deliverable 1 meeting to approve and finalize the Strategic Plan, PIV card enrollment and issuance, and ARC onboarding. If any on-site work or travel is required, please state the number of trips, the destinations, who furnishes workspace and badges on site, and whether travel is included in the firm fixed price.travel is optional
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkI.C Applicable Model and Data Resources, p.5; VI Deliverable 4, p.8Section I.C sources imagery from the USGS EROS STAC, and Deliverable 4 requires Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery. Please identify the source the Government intends for Sentinel-2 imagery, and state who bears the cost of any data access, cloud storage, requester-pays retrieval or egress charges, and any commercial platform or API account used for imagery discovery or download.Sentinel-2 imagery is optional and not required. Landsat imagery is required.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkI.A Introduction and III Technical Requirements, pp.4 and 6Please confirm that USGS Advanced Research Computing compute, GPU and storage allocations used for development, testing and the 50 km validation reach are provided at no cost to the Contractor, and identify any other direct cost, such as software licenses, repository hosting or continuous integration services, that the Government expects the Contractor to carry within the firm fixed price.Government will cover ARC computing, storage and data costs
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkII Scope of Work, p.5, government-furnished itemsSection II lists the government-furnished items: a laptop, log-in credentials, contractor email, a PIV card, DOI IT security training, and lidar, photogrammetry and satellite-derived shoreline validation datasets. Please state how many laptops and PIV cards will be issued (one per contractor staff member or a fixed number), how soon after award they are expected to be issued, and whether schedule relief applies to Deliverables 1 and 2 if access is delayed.up to two laptops and PIV, provided during first 1 month of work
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkI.A Introduction, p.4; III Technical Requirements, p.6Please identify which ARC system or systems the workflow must run on, the job scheduler, whether container runtimes such as Apptainer are supported, whether GPU nodes are available for machine-learning inference, the storage quota available for imagery, and whether ARC compute or data transfer nodes have outbound internet access for imagery download.These are all available from ARC system descriptions and helpdesks online
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkII Scope of Work, p.5; VIII Place of Performance, p.8May development and testing be performed in a contractor-provided environment before code is deployed to ARC, or must all development occur on the government-furnished laptop and ARC? If a contractor environment is permitted, does a FedRAMP authorization boundary requirement apply to it? For example, Advent's Enablement platform on AWS GovCloud holds a FedRAMP High Readiness Assessment Report (RAR FR2104524844) and is pursuing FedRAMP 20x Class C; please state whether an environment of that kind would be acceptable for development and continuous integration.contractor is free to develop in a manner that is most efficient.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkI.A Introduction and I.B Background, pp.4-5; III.e, p.6The SOW asks that the system remain flexible enough to incorporate additional deployment environments in the future. Is portability to another environment, for example a cloud hosting service, an acceptance criterion for any deliverable in this order, or a design consideration to document in the Strategic Plan only?CHS is an acceptable application
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkI.C Applicable Model, p.5; X Data Rights, p.9; Clauses p.15, 52.227-14Section I.C names CoastSeg as the model. Please confirm whether the Government expects the system to extend or fork the existing CoastSeg code base, use it as a dependency, or be a new implementation, and whether open-source components carrying their own licenses, including CoastSeg and its dependencies, may be incorporated in software delivered with unlimited rights under FAR 52.227-14. Please also state the license under which USGS expects the delivered code to be released.This Government expects to fork the existing CoastSeg codebase for an operational version operating on the ARC. CoastSeg is a US gov't work and the authoritative version is published at https://code.usgs.gov/SatelliteShorelines/coastseg. Because it extends and incorporates CoastSat (https://github.com/kvos/CoastSat), it inherits CoastSat's GPL 3.0 license, as noted by OSI 2025 Open Source Software Policy Memorandum of February 2, 2026, Section V. (1)(c)(iii), and we expect to release the CoastSeg fork in accordance with the terms and conditions of the pre-existing code.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkI.A Introduction, p.4; III.c and III.e, p.6Is training or retraining shoreline segmentation models within scope, or is the machine-learning scope limited to inference with existing CoastSeg models? If training is in scope, will the Government furnish labeled training data?training is within scope. All available USGS data are published in assets such as10.5066/P14MDKVJ
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkVI Deliverables 2 and 3, Acceptance Standard, p.7Deliverables 2 and 3 are accepted when the software 'allows regional-scale satellite imagery download, shoreline detection, and data production'. Please define regional scale for acceptance, for example a minimum length of coastline, number of regions of interest or imagery time span, and state which coastline the acceptance tests will use.regional scale = 50 km or more along a open US coast
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkVI Deliverable 4, p.8; II Scope of Work, p.5Deliverable 4 requires validation on a reach of U.S. coastline at least 50 km long. Will the Government select the reach and furnish the lidar, photogrammetry and satellite-derived shoreline datasets for it, and is there a minimum accuracy threshold, for example a horizontal shoreline position error, that the results must meet for acceptance, or are the results reported without a pass or fail threshold?SDS techniques have several published accuracy levels that should be met or surpassed (see formative research on CoastSat). Site will be chosen by US Gov.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkVI Deliverable 5, p.8; IV Deliverables, p.6Deliverable 5 requires completion of USGS code review and publication under Fundamental Science Practices and IM OSQI 2019-01. Please state who performs the review and approval steps, the expected review duration, which repository is used for the release (for example code.usgs.gov), and whether acceptance of and payment for CLIN 00050 depend on USGS approval being completed before May 31, 2028.The FSP and code requirements are described in detail in the USGS Survey Manual. Review lengths are dependent on review reconcilitations.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkVI Deliverables 1 and 2, p.7; VIII Place of Performance, p.8Deliverables 1 and 2 both fall in the first 6 months. Please state the due date for the Strategic Plan and the time the Government expects to take to approve it, and the expected frequency of the periodic virtual coordination meetings.No date, must be fully developed and approved in 6 months.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkVI Deliverables and Acceptance, p.7; VIII Place of Performance, p.8Please state any expected response and resolution times for Government requests and for defects found in delivered code, whether any help desk hours or system uptime commitment applies to the workflow on ARC during the period of performance, and whether any support or warranty period is expected after the final training session.All communications and resolutions should be timely and ensure timing in deliverables is met.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkI.A Introduction and I.B Background, pp.4-5Do any open issues in the CoastSeg repository, POA&M items, or known defects in the current PCMSC CoastSeg workflows transfer to the Contractor as requirements for this order, or is the scope limited to the Section III technical requirements?Contractor is required to provide products as described in SOW.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Accessibility Requirements ToolInstructions to Offerors item 1, p.23; E205.3 H, p.20; 503 and 602, p.22Instructions to Offerors item 1 asks for an Accessibility Conformance Report for each commercially available ICT item offered. The deliverable is custom-developed scientific software that may be operated from scripts, notebooks or a command line on ARC. Please confirm whether an ACR is required with the quotation, at delivery, or not at all for this order, and which provisions, for example 503 Applications, 602 Support Documentation and E205.3 H training materials, the Government will apply to the delivered workflow, documentation and training materials.The Accessibility Requirements Tool provides details of how to comply with Section 508
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Accessibility Requirements ToolInstructions to Offerors items 2 to 4, pp.23-24Instructions to Offerors items 2 to 4 ask for an approach to universal design, plans for features that do not fully conform, and typical user scenarios. Should these be included in the quotation, and if so, under which evaluation factor are they considered?These will be evaluated from evidence of expereince, capability, and past performance.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkI.A Introduction and I.B Background, pp.4-5Is there an incumbent or predecessor contract under which CoastSeg or the current PCMSC shoreline workflows were developed or maintained? If so, please provide the incumbent name, the contract number and the current annual value, and state whether that contractor is eligible to compete for this order.There have been several contracts with multiple contractors to build CoastSeg over time.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkII Scope of Work, p.5; III.a, p.6Will the current CoastSeg developers, whether USGS staff or a contractor, be funded and available to provide knowledge transfer to the awardee, for example a walkthrough of the code base, model files and existing PCMSC processing conventions? If not, quoters will price the ramp-up from public documentation, so please confirm.USGS staff will be available.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, 52.212-2 Evaluation52.212-2(a), p.14, Corporate experience and Technical Capability52.212-2 evaluates the experience of key personnel and technical capability, 'including such things as resumes of key personnel'. The SOW designates no key personnel. Please state which roles the Government considers key personnel, whether resumes are required with the quotation and whether any page limit applies to them, and whether the minimum of three years of relevant experience applies to each named individual, to the company, or to either.Resumes should be provided for all key personnel detailing relevant experiences by personnel
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkII Scope of Work, p.5, PIV card and DOI IT security trainingThe Government furnishes a PIV card, DOI credentials and ARC access. Please state the background investigation level required for contractor staff, whether U.S. citizenship is required for staff issued a PIV card or given ARC access, and how long credentialing is expected to take after award.Citizenship is required, investigations are conducted outside of the USGS
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, 52.212-2 Evaluation52.212-2(a), pp.14-15, relative importance52.212-2 states that experience and past performance, when combined, are more important than price, but does not state where Capability ranks. Please state the relative importance of Capability against experience, past performance and price, and whether qualifications a. to e. are evaluated as separate elements or within those factors.Capability will be considered but not over experience and past performance
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, 52.212-2 Evaluation52.212-2(a), p.14, Past performance52.212-2 asks for at least three references with contact information and states that CPARS will be used. Is a past performance questionnaire required from references, or may CPARS records be cited in place of one to reduce the burden on references? May references cover commercial and non-federal work, and work performed by a proposed subcontractor or key personnel? Please also state how the Government defines recent, for example within three or five years.References are required, as stated, and should be as recent as possible
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Clausesp.2 NAICS and set-aside statement; 52.219-6, p.16The RFQ is a Total Small Business set-aside under NAICS 541511 with a $34M size standard and incorporates 52.219-6, but 52.219-14 Limitations on Subcontracting is not listed, while the evaluation credits the experience of subcontractors. Please confirm the set-aside and size standard, and whether 52.219-14 applies to this order.As stated, this is small business set aside, NAICS 541511, and 52.219-14 does not apply.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, Statement of WorkIII Technical Requirements, p.6; GS0199 Prevention of Malicious Code, p.19Does the Government permit AI-assisted software development tools, for example GitHub Copilot or Claude Code, in producing code delivered under this order, including on the government-furnished laptop? If permitted, please state any DOI or USGS disclosure, review or provenance requirement for AI-assisted code under the Fundamental Science Practices code review.All use of AI must conform to USGS, DOI and Federal Government policies, which are subject to change at any time.
RFQ 140G0326Q0205, ClausesGS0231 Technical Liaison, paragraph (e), p.17GS0231 paragraph (e) leaves the Technical Liaison name, telephone and email as [xxx]. Please confirm the Technical Liaison will be named at award, and whether that person will be the PCMSC technical lead who approves the Strategic Plan.Contacts will be provided at award.

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