34300020Q0010 Amendment 1.pdf

34300020Q0010

WLAN Upgrade

Amendment 1

5/20/2020

1. Site Visit

USITC recognizes the need for a pre bid site visit and will accommodate interested vendor’s requests.

Due to safety concerns over the spread of Covid-19, the commission will allow only one representative per company. The visitor must have their own PPE including face mask/cover, gloves and practice 6 feet of social distancing while performing the site survey.

Please e mail site visit requests directly to sumit.rana@usitc.gov and include the name of the representative and three available dates within next two weeks I.E. 5/25/2020 through 6/8/2020.

Pre-bid site visit is not mandatory but rather optional to all prospective offerors.

2. Personnel eligibility requirements

The scope of each position on this contract is determined by the USITC. All positions are required to be filled by personnel who are U.S. citizens. The Contractor is required to provide personnel to fill positions that have been designated as the following:

• National security positions that do not require access to classified information.

• Suitability positions requiring a favorable Suitability/Fitness and/or Public Trust Determination

Non-Access Personnel

Public Trust Positions: Personnel responsible for cabling/installation

The Contractor is responsible for providing personnel within scope favorable Public Trust Determinations. These personnel will require a Tier 2 (or equivalent) background investigation.

The USITC Security Office can provide assistance by processing and funding investigation requests and providing adjudication services for prospective applicants selected by the Contractor. An Interim Public Trust determination may be granted while an investigation is pending at the National Background Investigation Bureau (NBIB), providing an assessment by the USITC Security Office that all available information obtained during the initial vetting process is favorable.

National security positions: Personnel requiring network access (engineers, project manager etc.)

These positions require a Secret eligibility. USITC expects the contractor personnel at this level to already possess an in scope Final Secret eligibility or higher, based off a Tier 3 or equivalent background investigation.

mailto:sumit.rana@usitc.gov

ITC will not be sponsoring personnel at this level.

Vetting Procedures the Contractor will abide by the in-processing and final adjudicative security procedures of the USITC Security Office, which entails the following:

(1) The Contractor must provide the COR the following documents ten (10) days prior to a tentative start date:

• Declaration for Federal Employment Option Form 306

• Employment Verification Request I-9 Form

• Personnel Identification Verification (PIV) Form

• Current Resume

(2) The USITC Security Office must be provided a minimum of two (2) weeks to conduct an initial Pre-Appointment Screening for all Proposed Contract Personnel, which may entail the following:

• Determining whether reciprocity applies pursuant to Executive Order 13467 Reforming Processes Related to Suitability for Government Employment, Fitness for Contractor Employees, and Eligibility for Access to Classified National Security Information, June 30,

• Ordering and conducting a Final Suitability Determination on Reciprocity cases, if one has not been conducted

• Initiating and Reviewing Security Forms, and conducting and reviewing the results of a Fingerprint Submission for proposed contract personnel being processed by the USITC Office for labor categories designated within the Non-Access Personnel section noted above

• Contacting prior employers; residential, social, and developed references; verifying educational accomplishments; and/or interviewing an Applicant, when necessary

• Applying Issue Resolution methods to resolve derogatory and/or discrepant information

(3) The USITC Personnel Security Officer is responsible for:

• Ensuring that a Final Suitability/Fitness and/or National Security Adjudicative Determination is conducted for all Non-Access investigations sponsored by the USITC, and recorded in the appropriate federal records repository

Credentialing The USITC will provide identification badges for Contractor personnel who require routine logical and/or physical access to the primary work location. All Contractor personnel shall wear these badges when on duty at the Government site. Badges are required to identify the individual and shall be clearly and distinctly marked as contractor personnel and will comply with HSPD-12 requirements.

Termination The USITC reserves the right to terminate Contractor personnel from working on this contract at any time. Should the USITC exercise this right, the Contractor and/or the terminated Contract personnel is hereby apprised that the USITC is not required to disclose the cause of the termination or provide any documentation in support of this action. The Contractor and/or the terminated Contract personnel are hereby apprised that there is no recourse for this action.

Security All Contractor personnel who require routine logical and/or physical access to the site will be subject to the information security rules of behavior and governance of its user community to include security awareness training and additional specialized training regarding contingency planning and incident response protocols. Any additional requirements will be issued from the COR, CIO or CIO’s designee.

Privacy Act Work on this contract may require personnel to have access to private information covered by the Privacy Act, Title 5 of the U.S. Code, Section 552a (in addition to other types of non-public information). All Contractor personnel shall adhere to the requirements of the Privacy Act as well as any applicable USITC or Federal rule/regulation regarding private information or other types of non-public information.

3. Floor plans and list of trade-in equipment

Floor plans and a list of trade-in equipment will be distributed to the interested vendors once they have signed an NDA. These requests can be sent directly to Sumit.rana@usitc.gov. Please include the solicitation number 34300020Q0010 in the subject line of your e mail.

4. Quote submission deadline.

Quote submission deadline is being extended to Monday, 6/22/2020 1200 EST.

Questions not addressed in this section will be addressed in Amendment 2 including any new questions that, in government’s opinion, sites an issue of significant importance.

5. Questions and Answers.

a. Is a pre-bid site survey going to available to bidders?

Yes, see Q1.

b. How many APs need to be ordered?

Yet to be determined as the solution need to be engineered to provide WLAN coverage through our office suites.

c. Can soft copies of all the floorplans and the AP placement overlaid the floorplan be provided?

Yes, details already addressed in this attachment. Furthermore, our current solution should not be used as the basis for a new solution as it does not provide ample coverage or performance.

d. Will the WLC uplink connect to fiber or copper switchports? If fiber, is SM or MM used?

We can support either if more than 1GPS is needed we’ll move to 10GB MM fiber. We typically use MM fiber.

e. Will the 2 WLCs in HA be in side by side in the same row a rack or in different rows?

The HA pair will be in close proximity to each other.

f. For the 802.11ax AP is the preferred throughput 2Gb/s or 4Gb/s?

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Our switches currently do not support MGigs but we do prefer the ability to expand to 4Gbs as we are incrementally upgrading to switches that support MGig.

g. For the 802.11ax AP is having a custom Cisco ASIC with next gen ClearAir a requirement?

The solution should support the addition of this capability in the future. We understand additional investments may be required to support this change.

h. For the 802.11ax AP is having dual 5Ghz(one radio for close range and another radio for further clients) a requirement?

Yes, we will like to ability to combine the radios to dual 5Ghz

i. Do the team lead resume's need to be submitted with the bid or after the bid has been awarded?

No this is not a requirement as long as proof or experience can be provided upon request.

Resumes will be needed for post award security vetting.

j. Coverage location:

i. Are there coverage requirements for areas outside scoped Offices and Courtrooms? E.g. stairwells are listed as best effort, what about restrooms, atriums, storage, etc.

No additional coverage requirements.

ii. Alternatively, can you indicate on the floorplans (freehand drawing/highlighter is fine) areas which either require or do not require wireless coverage?

Our office space is easy to identify on the floor plans. Please contract us with additional questions once you receive them.

k. Vendor solution must be interoperable with existing wireless and wired LAN equipment:

i. What existing equipment is in use?

We’re predominantly a Cisco network/shop. These requirements were to insure we did not have to build out a sperate network to operate/manage the new WLAN solution.

ii. Can USITC provide the current or planned Cisco ISE / Prime and MSE software versions that they would like integrated with the proposed install?

We operate on the most current stable release of all system software. Current Version:

Cisco Prime 3.8.0.0.130 – Base license, Lifecycle license and Assurance license 35 count Cisco CMX 10.6.1-47 – Base license 70 count Cisco ISE 2.6.0.156 – Base license 1750 count

l. Signal strength, building and wall materials, obstructions

i. Other than the floor plans provided can USITC indicate if anything other than standard commercial construction materials (Drywall, 2x4 framing, etc.) is used in the facility?

We doubt there is but that’s really unknown as we’ve occupied the building for over 20 years.

ii. Within the facility or floors, does a specific area or areas exist which may block RF signal such as metal vaults (safes), SCIFs, etc.?

Not at this time.

iii. Is there a resource familiar with the facility in scope that will be available for a web based meeting to review the layout and wall construction, building materials, and answer questions around general space usage and coverage requirements?

Yes. ITC will provide resources for meetings that are scheduled in advance.

m. Bid respondents will need to take floorplans, prep, and create predictive coverage maps per floor/area to properly respond to this bid with correct quantities and placement of APs.

i. An extension is recommended to ensure adequate time for this process. Is an extension of 2+ weeks possible?

Quote submission deadline has been extended. See Q4.

n. Wireless Design and Architecture

i. C.4-r. “LWAPs design and placement must be aesthetically pleasing”

a. How is this determined? E.g. by mounting method/location, by placement of AP in relation to other elements, by look/design of the AP?

Our current LWAPS are drop cleaning track mounted extremely with wires neatly connected to the AP. Similar installations are acceptable except in the court rooms where LWAPs are hidden from view where possible.

ii. RE: Guest Anchor controller location. The guest anchor controller must be a physical appliance;

where will that be hosted – onsite in Washington DC office, or at the Sterling Datacenter?

Our current Anchor controller is located at our Sterling Datacenter. However, we can situate the

Anchor controller based on your network design.

iii. RE: Is the Sterling Datacenter set up as a cold/warm DR site or is it active/online?

b. Cold/warm DR - meaning it’s not online/active unless there’s an outage at the Washington DC office site with a full failover?

Sterling is a primary hot site

-OR-

c. Active/online HA – meaning it’s online and operational, and services at that site are available even when the primary Washington, DC site is online?

Sterling datacenter is active and online and is the primary site.

o. Cabling and Infrastructure to Support Wireless

i. Existing cabling

a. Confirm please- USITC plans to run new cables for all Aps (and not re-use any cable).

That’s your call if you feel comfortable trying to reuse old cable be prepared to stand behind you work.

b. We are assuming CMP Plenum cable. Will you want CAT-6 or CAT-6A, and 2 runs per AP for future expansion?

What’s recommended for MGig?

c. Confirm please- USITC would like to see price options for respondents to quote removal of existing AP cabling and existing Aps.

yes. We’d like to see the pricing to have all old LWAPs and dead cabling removed.

ii. Existing switching

d. Since the plan is to use the existing switching infrastructure, what PoE output for AP ports is supported on current network switches?

Our switches are not POE capable. We’ll need some type of power injection solution.

e. Will USITC ensure there is adequate port and power budget per switch, and add additional switches if needed?

Our switches are not POE capable but we will insure there are ample ports available for LWAPs

iii. AP mounting and ceiling heights

f. Are there any places an AP must be mounted higher than 15 ft from the ground?

Yes some of our court rooms have high ceilings

g. Does USITC’s WLAN environment currently have any Aps with external directional semi-directional antennas?

No

p. Project, Operational, and Deliverables

i. Trade-in discount requested. Please provide the list of equipment to be traded in, including manufacturer, Part Number, and quantities. If Serial Numbers are available, that is helpful but not required.

This can be provided once an NDA is signed.

ii. Cabling, cable removal and running: Removing and replacing the cabling for Aps will create outages in areas during the process. In the RFQ, the response to question #29 “working hours” was that any times could be accommodated.

We can support work during normal business hours. Our goal is to minimize the disruption to workflow so work in conference rooms and offices may have to occur before or after normal business hours. The new system can be installed in Parallel to the existing system and a warm cut can be performed once the new system is tested and approved.

1. Knowing some activities will create outages, what is the downtime expectation or tolerance throughout the project? E.g. can long and in what range (within the floor plans) can there be outages?

It’s our belief that the new system can be installed while the old system is operational, and a warm cut can occur.

2. What is the lead time and process for requesting and obtaining approvals for maintenance windows for these outages?

We typically like 5 or more business days’ notice but can accommodate shorter lead times if deemed necessary.

q. Was there a pre-solicitation such as an RFI or an Industry Day, with a draft RFQ distributed to some vendors for them to ask the questions in Attachment 3?

Yes, six vendors were randomly selected during the market research phase of this requirement to get industry insight. Three of the vendors showed interest and were given a draft SOW.