70FA6019I00000001_(FEMA_PTS_RFI)_FBO_-_14_November_2018.pdf

Solicitation Number: 70FA6019I00000001 Notice Type: Request For Information (RFI)

Synopsis:

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Federal Insurance & Mitigation Administration (FIMA) Risk Management Directorate’s (RMD)’s Production and Technical Services (PTS) Support Services

FIMA is a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FEMA, which operates the Risk Management and Flood Insurance Directorates and the National Flood Insurance Program

(NFIP).

For almost 50 years, FEMA’s NFIP has offered flood insurance coverage to homeowners, renters, and businesses as protection against flood losses. In return, local governments commit to sound floodplain management and related flood disaster mitigation efforts. In addition to offering flood insurance, the duties of the NFIP include identifying communities’ flood risks, mapping and publishing Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRM) of those risks, helping communities meet floodplain management requirements, and encourage citizens to purchase flood insurance in order to equitably distribute burdens among the insured and the general public.

The National Flood Mapping Program aspires to support a future where the conversation and perception about flood risk and mitigation has fundamentally changed, communities and individuals intrinsically care about their flood risk and make decisions to protect themselves and their interests. Presently, through the Risk Mapping, Assessment, and Planning (Risk MAP) program and through continued execution of the National Flood Mapping Program, the PTS requirement will support the program in ensuring that flood hazard and risk information is fed, used, and served up in increasingly creative ways by a large and diverse partner ecosystem and actionable by our customers. The PTS requirement will support the program in producing widely accessible flood hazard information that is easy to understand, available when our customers need it, and served up by trusted partners in the tailored way that will drive and optimize risk-informed decisions and behaviors. Sustained delivery of the mapping program should support the risk management lifecycle to: identify and analyze hazards; assess risks; communicate risk; identify and prioritize mitigation options; and advance mitigation and risk transfer. PTS support will apply emerging science and technology solutions to support FEMA in determining how identified flood hazards and flood risk assessments delivered by the mapping program will consistently be used to establish flood insurance rates, support sound floodplain management and inform viable flood mitigation options. By relating the reduction of risk for a flood mitigation project or floodplain management ordinance to the applicable insurance premiums through FEMA’s new risk rating model, the mapping program will serve as a sound flood risk management framework for the National Flood Insurance Program.

RFI Questions FEMA is asking Industry’s input to the questions posed below related to the FEMA-FIMA PTS support services requirement. Please refer to the incorporated draft vision and scope categories document, as well as information contained within the questions to provide a response.

Please answer the following questions as they pertain to your expertise:

Theme - Data Management and Integrated Delivery

1. FEMA may implement more sophisticated mapping techniques in the future. These elaborate techniques could require a few thousands of iterations and runs of the existing Hydrology and Hydraulics (H&H) computer models in the same study area. If such techniques were to be implemented, what recommendations do you have for scope performance requirements outcomes/results that could be incorporated into a requirements document, or provided as supporting solicitation information, related to helping FEMA reduce the total time needed to run the computer models significantly and keep costs at a reasonable level?

2. There are nearly 2,000 active mapping projects currently in production and FEMA annually initiates approximately 200 projects to address programmatic needs. Considering the growing backlog, what steps should FEMA take to reduce the number of projects in process and complete a large portion of these efforts over the next 5-10 years?

3. FEMA’s flood map inventory still contains FIRMs in a paper format. Approximately 800+ jurisdictions exist in this format. If FEMA is transitioning to a digital environment, what recommendations do you have for mechanisms that could be leveraged to rapidly create and ingest this data into a digital environment to make the data useful for internal and external stakeholders?

4. FEMA’s existing Flood Insurance Rate Maps depict the Special Flood Hazard Area as an indicator of a potential flood hazard to assist floodplain management efforts and building code enforcement. The insurance industry leverages catastrophic modeling to reflect the same incident but as a depiction of risk. How should FEMA influence the mapping program in the future to account for the needs of floodplain managers, building officials and insurance needs based on these different perspectives of the same incident? What recommendations do you have for scope performance requirements outcomes/results that could be incorporated into a requirements document, or provided as supporting solicitation information, should be included to manage these elements effectively?

5. The length of time Risk MAP projects take to step through the full process extends beyond a

5-year window and the transition of projects between different providers can be inefficient at times. As it relates to building a requirement that addresses this concern:

• How can FEMA reduce the timeline for these Risk MAP projects?

• How can these transitions improve?

• Are there data interoperability components that can be introduced to make this process more efficient?

• What open source opportunities can be leveraged to make FEMA’s data accessible and efficient to absorb for all interested stakeholders?

Theme – Exploration

6. Considering how risks, natural catastrophe and other risks, are quantified and managed, what recommendations do you have for scope performance requirements outcomes/results that could be incorporated into a requirements document, or provided as supporting solicitation information related to developing a current approach to quantifying and informing flood risk?

Theme - Post Disaster Service Delivery

7. The current products meet regulatory requirements for flood hazard identification used in turn to regulate development (flood zone and base flood elevation). In reality, other environmental hazards also regulate development in floodplains but depiction of those hazards and the source, data and maps for them reside outside of FEMA. To serve these regulatory requirements, which stem from adopted consensus model building codes in NFIP communities across the nation, what recommendations do you have for scope performance requirements outcomes/results that could be incorporated into a requirements document, or provided as supporting solicitation information, that would not incur, great expense, so that stakeholders can view, access and utilize the varied hazard information/data/maps, in a seamless and integrated fashion, that regulate how and where they build in the floodplain?

8. How can FEMA-FIMA increase the usefulness of our post-disaster products and services in

RMD Programs including Risk MAP?

9. Describe a potential range of post-disaster services that is scalable to accommodate small-to-large disasters.

10. How could we leverage disaster recovery operations to target State Code Councils and local code adoption agencies to encourage adoption of higher standards?

Theme - Customer Experience

11. Iteration and innovation to best meet our customers’ needs is very important to us. What recommendations do you have for how FEMA brings onboard proven technical innovations from one PTS provider if there are multiple PTS providers under contract? If the innovation is IT-related, how should FEMA address collaborative coordination between the PTS providers and FIMA’s Customer and Data Services (CDS) provider?

Theme - Acquisition Strategy

12. What business contract structures, teaming arrangements, and socio-economic programs for small business would be beneficial to FEMA in order to achieve this requirement? We would like to learn more about ways vendors are improving knowledge sharing between vendors and how they can improve access to specialized expertise from subcontractors (such as coastal or earthquake) as well as providing input and coordination across vendors for extemporaneous issues.

13. What recommendations do you propose for performance standards and corresponding metrics have worked well for you previously as part of contract performance management/quality assurance? What, in your opinion, was/were the most effective standard(s) and metric(s) in achieving the ultimate outcomes desired from the Government?

14. What recommendations do you have related to FEMA mitigation strategies for conflicts of interest amongst our PTS provider(s) and other providers during steady state or disaster support operations?

15. Describe your efforts in contract transition that have been successful on other contracts that you have worked on. What are some best practices for transitioning into a new contract? What are some best practices for transitioning out of a contract? What is the recommended timeframe your company would need to transition into a new organization and operate effectively?

16. As it relates to the PTS requirement, what recommendations/insights do you have pertaining to either 1) obstacles or barriers to; 2) scope performance requirements outcomes/results that could be incorporated into a requirements document; and/or 3) desired supporting solicitation information, related to the items below:

• Contractual change control process.

• Project monitoring, Earned Value Management.

• Pricing considerations, invoicing.

• Project delivery, scheduling.

• Geographical coverage of work required across the nation and how the Government should structure an appropriate contract vehicle to meet this need.

https://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&q=extemporaneous&tbs=dfn:1&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=E2tDUcOREKqX1AWUhYCYBA&sqi=2&ved=0CC4QkQ4&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.43828540,d.d2k&fp=6405f5db73465c07&biw=1308&bih=887

Question & Answer Period Prior to submitting a response to this RFI, FEMA is allowing a question and answer period relating only to the questions contained within this RFI. Only electronic submissions will be accepted and are due to the contracting officer, Barry Taylor, Barry.Taylor@fema.dhs.gov, and the Contract Specialist William Sanfilippo, william.sanfilippo@fema.dhs.gov, no later than 2:00 PM (EST) on 16 November 2018. The subject line of the email shall contain the following: Questions for RFI 70FA6019I00000001 FIMA – PTS. The government anticipates providing answers to the RFI questions on 20 November 2018.

Submission Requirements RFI responses are due to the contracting officer, Barry Taylor, Barry.Taylor@fema.dhs.gov, and the Contract Specialist William Sanfilippo, william.sanfilippo@fema.dhs.gov, no later than 12:00 PM (EST) on 27 November 2018. The subject line of the email shall contain the following:

Questions for RFI 70FA6019I00000001 FIMA – PTS. Only electronic submissions will be accepted.

Submission to this RFI shall include the following information:

1) Organization name, physical address, point-of-contact’s name and email address and telephone number, website address, and DUNS number and/or CAGE code;

2) Statement of company’s current socio-economic designation (i.e. HUBZone small business concern, service-disabled veteran-owned small business firm, 8(a) contractor, woman-owned small business, small business, or large business); and

3) Tailored responses to the incorporated questions shall be no longer than sixteen (16) pages addressing your insight and perspective on the matters being proposed by the Government.

Formatting specifics are:

1) 8 ½ x 11 size pages

2) 1 inch margins (top, bottom, and sides)

3) Times New Roman font – no smaller than 10 point

4) Page limitation does not include: 1 cover page or 1 letter of introduction

Do not include promotional materials.

RFI Disclaimer This RFI is part of the Government program’s market research efforts and issued solely for informational and planning purposes. It does not constitute a solicitation or a promise to issue a solicitation in the future. This RFI does not commit FEMA to contract for any supply or service whatsoever. Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any future solicitation, if any is issued. Responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by FEMA to form a binding contract. No solicitation is currently available. Any future solicitation package will be made available on the Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) website https://www.fbo.gov, or mailto:Barry.Taylor@fema.dhs.gov mailto:Barry.Taylor@fema.dhs.gov https://www.fbo.gov/ other determined appropriate government point of entry. Interested parties are solely responsible for monitoring the relevant government point of entry websites for the release of a solicitation package and/or any updates/amendments.

At this time, one-on-one telephone or in-person due diligence sessions are not planned but may be considered should the government deem them necessary to obtain sufficient level of knowledge required for the completion of the market research.

In order to receive an award from any resultant solicitation, should one be issued, the successful offeror must be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM). The SAM website is https://www.sam.gov.

No reimbursement will be made for any costs associated with providing this information in response to this synopsis or any follow-up information requests. All costs associated with responding to this RFI will be solely at the responding party’s expense.