Requests_for_Information_Amd_0001_0001.pdf

RFQ 140P8521Q0037, Amendment 0001 Continuation Page 2 of 8

RFQ #140P8521Q0037

TRAFFIC DATA RETRIEVAL AND REPORTING FOR YOSEMITE

Requests for Information

1. Regarding the statement “The Contractor will provide the NPS with a means of viewing and obtaining data from Yosemite’s existing traffic count stations,” can we have any information or documentation about your existing system, or will that documentation exist for the winning bidder?

a. Answer: The Statement of Work attempted to describe the system in Article I, Sections 1 and 2. The use of wire loops and automatic data recorders is generally standardized across states, counties, and cities in the U.S. FHWA and the NPS presently use the Peek “Sabre” ADR1000 to count vehicles and store data. These units are accessed by modem. The NPS will provide modem phone numbers and locations (latitude and longitude) of eight traffic counts stations and lane configurations to the successful bidder.

2. Regarding the statement “Contractor will identify the site-specific locations of eight existing traffic counts stations,” are you relying on the bidders to also conduct traffic studies and designs?

a. Answer: No, as indicated by Article II, Sections 2 and 3, the Contractor will provide the NPS with a means of viewing and obtaining data from Yosemite’s existing traffic count stations. The Contractor’s work product or products must provide the means of identifying the location of traffic count stations on screen, on a map or by some other means, e.g., tabular data.

3. Please clarify this statement, “This solicitation is a 100% total small business set-aside in accordance with FAR 19.502-2, and the NAICS code is 518210 with an associated small business size standard of $35 million in average annual receipts.” Do we have to have $35M in annual receipts to bid, or is that the maximum?

a. Answer: The small business size standard of $35 million in annual average receipts is a maximum amount for this type of service. If your company does less than $35 million then you are able to submit a quote for this service. This must be reflected in your www.sam.gov record under representations and certifications.

4. Is this an entirely new requirement or is there an incumbent? If there is an incumbent could you share the name of that firm and whether or not they are able to compete for this requirement?

a. Answer: This is a new requirement with no incumbent.

5. Can companies from outside the USA submit a quote?

a. Answer: This solicitation is 100% set-aside for small business concerns in accordance with FAR 19.502-2. Pursuant to FAR 19.301-1(a), to be eligible for award as a small business concern identified in 19.000(a)(3), an offeror is required to represent in good faith that it is a small business at the time of its written

RFQ 140P8521Q0037, Amendment 0001 Continuation Page 3 of 8 representation. An offeror may represent that it is a small business concern in connection with this solicitation if it meets the definition of a small business concern applicable to the solicitation and has not been determined by the Small Business Administration to be other than a small business. Contracting officers do no pre-certify prospective offerors as eligible or not eligible.

6. Would we be required to be on site to attend meetings?

a. Answer: See Article VII in the Statement of Work. No travel or site work is required to complete the Statement of Work. Prospective bidders are welcome to visit sites, but travel or lodging will not be compensated by the government.

7. Can we perform the tasks from outside of the USA?

a. Answer: Federal officials must be able to access the web site or hosted service that is described by Article II, Sections B and C, with unlimited access for the duration of the term defined by Section VIII, through a U.S. government-operated network.

The federal government sometimes blocks access to foreign and domestic servers for security reasons. We know of no broad prohibitions on labor conducted overseas or in other nations.

8. Can we submit the proposals via email?

a. Answer: Yes. All quotes must be submitted by email to lisa_henson@nps.gov.

9. Will NPS Consider extending the due date as questions are due on the 16th and the response is due on the 24th?

a. Answer: Yes, this modification extends the Request for Quotation from 08/24/2021 to 09/03/2021. No further extensions will be granted.

10. Is there an incumbent contractor working this project currently? If yes, who is the vendor?

a. Answer: See question #4.

11. What is the current budget for this project?

a. Answer: This information is not provided.

12. We assume that NPS does not want to “own” and run software on premise and is open to cloud based solutions. Can NPS confirm?

a. Answer: Correct, a cloud-based solution would be consistent with the provisions of Article II, Subsections C5 and C7. The NPS lacks the skill sets or personnel to operate or maintain its own system.

13. How much data (in gigabytes) do you generate on a monthly basis? In what format is that data?

a. Answer: The traffic counters generate roughly 1.25 MB (or 0.00125 GB) of data per month. The raw data is saved by the Peek Sabre ADR1000 units in a BIN (Binary) file format.

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14. Is your data structured or unstructured data? Do you have a publicly accessible corpus of files for evaluation purposes?

a. Answer: With some uncertainty and lack of knowledge, we believe this is unstructured data. The BIN files were previously converted by FHWA and forwarded by to the NPS as monthly reports in PDF. Reports were also available upon request as PRN, but are now provided as Excel worksheets. The data is recorded on the basis of a 24-hour clock, with daily totals. Samples of a recent monthly delivery are provided in an attachment.

15. Does this data exist within a database today?

a. Answer: The data is aggregated by FHWA within a larger database, but not by the NPS. The NPS receives monthly reports from FHWA. FHWA will cooperate and provide data sets on interagency requests. With this solicitation, the NPS is primarily interested in reviewing data in the shorter term, as FHWA reports are not provided daily.

16. Does the government need SQL based structured data?

a. Answer: No, this would be nice to have, but SQL structured data was not required by the statement of work. We cannot say this is a requirement.

17. How much of that data is analyzed on a monthly basis (in gigabytes)?

a. Answer: Approximately 1.25 MB of data per month (or 0.00125 GB per month).

18. What is the approximate anticipated load on the web server?

a. Answer: The NPS does not have the expertise to respond to this question, and does not know what units of measure are commonly used to measure a server load.

19. How will you connect your data to the cloud?

a. Answer: The Contractor will be required to access data through phone lines, modems, and poll Automatic Data Recorders. The Contractor is required to provide a method of compiling the data and making reports available through a web-based method. The NPS will use internet browsers to access the site that is provided and maintained by the Contractor.

20. What are the requirements of the web app? A) Will the user authentication be required? B) What tools exist today for you to analyze data?

a. Answer: User authorization should be required. The primary intent is that information would be restricted to government employees; however, traffic count data in not considered to be sensitive information. The NPS will use traffic data to view and to understand recent periods of time or incidents. Data for longer-term periods can be provided by the FHWA to support traffic modeling and transportation planning by other federal contractors. The NPS will use selective judgment to compile reports and summaries as Excel tables and charts or graphs.

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21. Are you able to describe your ETL process today? Do you use any commercially off the shelf or custom built ETL tools?

a. Answer: The NPS has no ETL process or tools available at this time. This is essentially what is being requested in this solicitation. Responses to Questions 15 and 19 will help explain how consumer data is received at this time.

22. Do you have a preferred language such as Python or Java for ETL pipelines?

a. Answer: No preferences.

23. Do you have any inter-agency data requirements that you need to meet?

a. Answer: No.

24. Under Section D: NPS Roles and Responsibilities, the RFQ states that NPS will “Provide phone numbers to modems and ADRs that are located at each traffic count station.” Will Traffic data be accessed directly via modem for download?

a. Answer: Correct, this will be among the Contractor’s responsibilities.

25. How does FHWA currently provide monthly data delivered to NPS? What is the format and delivery mechanism?

a. Answer: See the response to Question 15.

26. Does the NPS plan on providing the base map of Yosemite National Park or is that up the vendor?

a. Answer: Shape files of park boundaries and the transportation system are available through an NPS web site: https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/Search/Quick. The NPS will provide data files by e-mail, if preferred.

27. Does NPS have a current reporting tool they would like to leverage or is that up to the vendor to propose?

a. Answer: Other than the framework described by the Statement of Work under Article II, Section C, the NPS has no requirements. The NPS appreciates the creativity and ingenuity of Contractors in fulfilling the government’s basic requirements and needs for service.

28. Are yearly services under CLIN 00010 paid at the beginning of the period of performance or after the 12-month period?

a. Answer: The Contractor would be paid upon delivery of a work product that fulfills the initial requirements of the Statement of Work. Article II, Subsection C6, indicates that the work would be completed as early as 90 days upon award. The Contractor could be compensated at that time, so long as the NPS and the Contractor agree that the initial stages of design have been completed. If it takes the Contractor more than 90 days to develop a program, compensation would be delayed. Contractor costs for hosting and maintaining the system would be paid annually through option years.

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29. Do you have any documentation or additional information available with regards to the system that stores the data at the traffic stations? This would help to confirm a way to access the data at the traffic stations.

a. Answer: See the response to Question 1.

30. What is the format in which the data is recorded and stored at the Traffic Count Stations?

a. Answer: See responses to Questions 13 and 14.

31. What is the current data warehouse architecture?

a. Answer: FHWA maintains a primary “data warehouse,” but the NPS has none. The NPS receives monthly reports from FHWA as consumers of data. The NPS saves PDFs and XLSX files as incremental records. Due to staffing and program constraints, FHWA is incapable of providing information at the frequency desired by the NPS. The Contractor would become responsible for warehousing data from the date when a contract is awarded.

32. Is NPS/YOSE using any BI tool currently to analyze data? If yes, please specify.

a. Answer: Yes, if Excel is considered a BI tool. No others are known to be provided as standard software for routine use by employees.

33. What is the expected number and type of users to use the solutions (eg. admin/creator, end users, etc.)?

a. Answer: Twelve NPS employees would need regular access to the information.

This includes one system administrator plus one backup. Others are general consumers of information: a transportation planner, social scientist, law enforcement rangers, and park administrators.

34. Is there an upper limit for the pricing we should be aware of?

a. Answer: This information is not provided.

35. Can the services be provided remotely? If yes, do the resources need to be in the USA?

a. Answer: See the response to Question 7.

36. Can we use an onsite-offshore model to deliver the services utilizing our resources based in India?

a. Answer: See the response to Question 7.

37. Would NPS consider extending the proposal due date by a week?

a. Answer: See response to Question #9.

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38. What information is collected when a vehicle enters the park?

a. Answer: Pre-existing inductive wire loops are embedded in the pavement of the roadway, generating a low-voltage electromagnetic field overhead. Automobiles, buses, and delivery trucks pass over the wire loop, break the magnetic field, and generate an electronic pulse to the automatic data recorder. Each pulse indicates one vehicle. We can determine nothing else about the vehicle as it passes a counter. No other information is collected or recorded. This traditional and routine method of counting cars has a 5% margin of error.

39. How much data do they store at a station currently? This information will be used to estimate data storage needed.

a. Answer: Asked and answered previously, see responses to Questions 13 and 14.

40. How long does the data need to be available for online access? After how many months can we archive the data?

a. Answer: A minimum of 12 months is desired. As indicated in response to Question 20, the NPS has an ability to retrieve long-term historic data through FHWA. The present need for the NPS is to view data in the recent past.

41. Will there be any reporting needed for historical data?

a. Answer: Not beyond the twelve-month period described above.

42. Will there be any payment information collected by this system?

a. Answer: No.

43. Software license or Open Source?

a. Answer: The NPS has no requirement or preference, but any related costs (or price options) should be identified within the bidder’s price proposal.

44. How is the current data gathered and stored at each site?

a. Answer: Traffic count data accumulates in the automatic data recorder that is installed at each of the eight stations, and accessed by modem. As indicated in response to Question 1, the NPS is currently using Peek “Sabre” ADR1000 units for this purpose.

45. What format is the data that is sent from each location?

a. Answer: Asked and partly answered previously, see responses to Questions 13 and

14. The data is not sent so much as it is retrieved through modems and polling software.

46. Does the current data have a timestamp for each record?

a. Answer: Yes, the data is recorded on a 24-hour clock, 365 days per year. The recorder includes a calendar so that the days of the month are accurately aligned with days of the week.

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47. How frequently is the data transferred?

a. Answer: The data will not be transferred, it is recorded. The Contractor’s responsibility is to retrieve data and provide a means of viewing data on an ongoing, daily basis. Refer to Article I, Section 3 of the Statement of Work.

48. Is this process automated? If not, how is the data sent and confirmed received?

a. Answer: The Contractor’s primary tasks are to automate data retrieval and devise a method of providing reports on a daily basis.

49. Where does the data go currently? Will that be expected to continue?

a. Answer: Refer in part to Article 1, Sections 1 and 2, of the Statement of Work. The data accumulates in Automatic Data Recorders and resides there until it is overwritten date for date in the following year. This data is retrieved by modem, by FHWA employees in a remote office building. In the alternative, if there are problems with polling software or phone lines, NPS staff can download data onto a flash drive and transmit the data as e-mail attachments. FHWA will continue to download data once per month, but the NPS does not have the personnel to collect manual downloads. Even though data is downloaded, the data will remain in the ADRs until overwritten in the following year.

50. Assuming you currently have just a traffic count, do you require any additional data to be collected for each visit?

a. Answer: The use of the phrase “each visit” is not understood. If the question refers to polling events or initial data downloads, no further data would be required, until the data is polled and provided on the following day.

51. Is it safe to assume that you want to be able to access the daily tally data for every day for the full 5 years?

a. Answer: Asked and answered in Question 40. One year of data storage will be adequate.

52. Is this a budgeted item? If so, can you share the budget amount anticipated for the project and ongoing maintenance?

a. Answer: This information is not provided.