36C24E24Q0053_2.docx

Special Notice Special Notice

Pre-solicitation Notice with Intent to Sole Source

GENERAL INFORMATION

Regional Procurement Office East Building 32 Suite 1A1111 1010 Delafield Road Pittsburgh PA 15215-1802

POINT OF CONTACT*

Contracting Officer Ann Marie Stewart annmarie.stewart@va.gov 401-919-0878

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

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DESCRIPTION

Pre-Solicitation Notice for notice of intent to award a sole source contract. This is not a solicitation. The Department of Veterans Affairs intends to negotiate a sole source contract for five (5) years and a five (5) year option period with Wellspring Worldwide, Inc., 954 W Washington Blvd, Suite 750, Chicago, IL to obtain continued use of a cloud-based database containing all information on VA inventions and intellectual property and agreements for the VA Technology Transfer Program (TTP), Research and Development Office. This requirement is for continued use and access of the existing Wellspring Sophia Cloud-based, FedRAMP authorized Software as a Service (SaaS) solution. VA TTP has worked closely with Wellspring over the course of several years to heavily configure VA TTP’s version of Sophia in the cloud for specific VA workflows and business processes. Wellspring Sophia for VA TTP is accessed and used by 127 VA Medical Centers across the United States for reporting invention disclosures and related activities. Tens of thousands of VA TTP records are contained in the database, with millions of individual datapoints.

This requirement for the continuation of the Sophia KMS is critical to the VA and the research office to avoid a duplication of efforts, excessive costs, and the possible loss of critical data. Any other company would need to design and develop a new system, and obtain FedRamp authorization. A new developed system is not guaranteed to produce all of the required VA functions. The Sophia software program works extremely well for the VA and the researchers across the country. The VA has already invested in this software. VA research facilities across the country have already had several months of training and years of experience working with this software in this particular context; other suppliers would require months of new training and substantial efforts to verify their understanding of the appropriate reports and protocols. Conducting such training and verifying adequate understanding by other suppliers (other than Wellspring) would place a substantial additional burden on the VA TTP office and on the members of the research team across the country. The research in progress could be jeopardized causing unacceptable delays and loss of critical data points stored in the Sophia cloud software. The “recoupment cost” associated with the loss of intellectual property data from the VA’s sole Technology Transfer Office’s knowledge management system would be devastating. There are more than 8,000 intellectual properties and a conservative estimate of over 100 related documents per each intellectual property consisting of patent, licensing, CRADA, royalty and other information.

Due to the fact that Wellspring developed and designed the Sophia cloud-based software as a service, (SaaS) specifically for the VA and the technology transfer program (TTP) office, Wellspring is the only vendor that can provide these services. Since the intent is to procure this on a sole source basis, no solicitation will be posted to FedBizOps (FBO). The applicable NAICS code is 541512 with a $34 MIL size standard. The PSC is DH10. The authority for this action is FAR 6.302.1-1 Only One Responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.

Interested persons may contact the Contracting Officer via email at annmarie.stewart@va.gov regarding this procurement. The determination to conduct a competitive procurement based on responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Contracting Officer.

Special Notice

Special Notice