A.02.06a JA Sole Source HURREVAC Signed Redacted.pdf

JUSTIFICATION REVIEW DOCUMENT

OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

PROJECT/EQUIPMENT: HURREVAC Operations and Maintenance CONTROL NO: NAB 22 016

AUTHORITY: 10 U.S.C. 3204 AMOUNT:

PREPARED BY:

CONTRACT SPECIALIST

DATE: 9/ /2022

CONTRACTING OFFICER DATE: 9/ /2022

TECHNICAL DATE: 9/ /2022

REQUIREMENTS DATE: 9/ /2022

SIGNATURES ARE REQUIRED BELOW:

I have reviewed this J&A and find the justification adequate to support other than full and open competition.

DISTRICT SMALL BUSINESS SPECIALIST

PROJECT MANAGER

DISTRICT COUNSEL

DISTRICT CONTRACTING CHIEF

SCO COUNSEL

Control Number: NAB-22-016

(Source Selection information - See FAR 2.101 and 3.104-4)

1 MAR 2022

Justification and Approval for Other than Full and Open Competition – FAR Part 6

1. Contracting Activity:

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Baltimore District, Contracting Division, 2 Hopkins Plaza, Baltimore, MD 21201.

2. Description of Action:

This Justification and Approval (J&A) is for a follow-on firm-fixed-price sole source contract to Sea Island Software, 1205 W Main Street Suite 211, Richmond, VA 23220- 4844. The solicitation number is W912DR22R0093. The total estimate for one year and two option years is using Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Interagency Funding, performance period beginning 30 September 2022. The current contract, W912DR-17-P-0118, expires on 29 September 2022.

3. Description of Supplies/Services:

The multi-agency National Hurricane Program (NHP) is a partnership between FEMA, USACE, and the National Hurricane Center (NHC), and supports Federal, State, and Local government hurricane planning, preparation, and response through various products, tools, and services. Established in 1985, the NHP prepared numerous Hurricane Evacuation Studies (HES) and provided tools and technical assistance to support State and Local governments in developing hurricane evacuation and response plans. To support the management of HES data, the NHP commissioned through an interagency agreement with FEMA to develop the HURREVAC software program.

HURREVAC software has been used by government emergency managers to assist their hurricane evacuation decision-making. HURREVAC is government-owned, restricted-use (not commercially available), real-time computer software program. Its intent is for government emergency managers to both track hurricanes and get real-time forecast information, and to provide evacuation timing guidance for communities based on information developed during the HES process, and real-time forecast data distributed by the NHC. The program provides a common operating picture for supporting hurricane response across all levels of government. HURREVAC is a fully operational web-based program, that was upgraded from its previous desktop only platform. HURREVAC has over 21,500 registered government users.

The purpose of this contract is to ensure the continuation of operations, maintenance, and development of HURREVAC and its sub-components through the end of fiscal year (FY) 2025. USACE major responsibilities will include project/contractor management, contractor oversight and technical guidance to the contractor for issue resolution, and to provide operational redundancy for HURREVAC for emergency operations. Through this contract, USACE will ensure that 24-hour, 7 days a week, voice and/or e-mail technical support for the program is available to any of its users.

Development subtasks, to be executed under this new sole source contract :

System notifications, messaging, and alert capabilities for displaying key information to users within HURREVAC

(Source Selection Information - See FAR 2.101 and 3.104-4)

MAR 2022

Enhancements to Points of Interest (POIs) visualizations and export capabilities RtePM module to support integration within the HURREVAC user interface.

Integration of an Instructor User Interface in the Training Module, to improve analysis and delivery of training content.

Development of a Clearance Times visualization chart based on key variables from the Hurricane Evacuation Study transportation analysis.

Operations and Maintenance subtasks to be continued under this sole source action include:

Continual Verification of Data Sources System Control, Monitoring, Reporting, and Recovery Updates to Database Files Operations and Maintenance for User Authentication Real-Time Monitoring Operations Hurricane/Typhoon Season requiring heightened response User Technical Support Development and updates to the Operations and Maintenance Manual Updates to the Help System and HURREVAC Support Webpage

4. Authority Cited:

10 U.S.C. 3204 as implemented by FAR 6.302-1and DFARS 206.302-1 “Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.”

Specifically, FAR 6.302-1(a)(2)(iii): For DoD, NASA, and the Coast Guard, services may be deemed to be available only from the original source in the case of follow-on contracts for the continued provision of highly specialized services when it is likely that award to any other source would result in, (B) Unacceptable delays in fulfilling the agency’s requirements.

5. Reason for Authority Cited:

Sea Island Software is needed to continue developments in the HURREVAC program under a contract it was previously awarded. This service is highly specialized and award to another contractor would result in unacceptable delays to the program.

Sea Island Software is the developer of the HURREVAC program. They are responsible for the development, maintenance and upgrade, and training support of the program.

Sea Island Software is the only vendor with technical operational knowledge of the program, including advanced meteorological experience, critical programming, and its data feed requirements. This is a restricted-use program that is not commercially available and was developed specifically for government-use in response to tropical cyclone events nationwide. There is also no other vendor able to take over these tasks without a significant amount of training, capability, and infrastructure development. The availability of this program is important throughout the year to support decision making in the Atlantic and Pacific basins where hurricane response exercises and training programs are conducted. Hence the operations, maintenance, and development of HURREVAC and its sub-components are vital for the continuance of the National Hurricane Program and for our Federal, State, and Local government user base in making life and property saving decisions during the tropical cyclone season.

Work accomplished in the current contract necessitates the continuity of those services with the same contractor, Sea Island Software, as it is best placed for continued operations, maintenance, and development of the system. Due to the highly specialized services provided by Sea Island Software in the current contract, awarding this new contract to other sources would result in unacceptable delays in fulfilling the agency’s requirement of maintaining the system’s full functionality throughout the entire calendar year, as HURREVAC is a critical tool used by the emergency management community to plan, train, and respond to the hurricane season (the Pacific Hurricane Season is year-round; the Atlantic Hurricane Season is 1 June- 30 November). The information below details the impacts of delaying service of HURREVAC if it were to be transferred to a new contractor.

In the current contract (W912DR17P0118), the legacy HURREVAC desktop system was transitioned to the new web-based version. The cost for this transition was awarded as the result of a full and open competition at and was executed over the span of one year. At that time, Sea Island Software was the contractor for the legacy system and was the only offeror who responded to the full and open solicitation. The contract required Sea Island Software to provide the transition, reducing the time that would have otherwise been dedicated to transfer knowledge and establish a new hosting system. As there have been no contractors found with equivalent level of expertise for executing the new HURREVAC contract work, at a minimum a delay of 1 year is expected before a new contractor would be able to establish a new geodatabase hosting system with the ability to scale to the required HURREVAC user base, and learn the full capability of HURREVAC (and emergency management community needs) to be able to successfully operate, maintain, and continue to develop the program to meet the requirements needed for the follow-on contract.

o In the current contract (W912DR17P0118), Sea Island Software scaled its development team and software geodatabase systems to expand HURREVAC’s internal capacity for hosting a potential user base of 25,000 local, state, and federal emergency managers. The current user base is 21,500. Should the follow-on contract be awarded to an entity other than Sea Island Software, it is expected that there would be at least a one-year delay in successfully transferring the knowledge and development of a new hosting systems that would be required to meet the Government’s needs.

A one-year delay would impact the ability for the program to continue to build out its total user base capacity, as the program would not be fully functional during the transition. By leveraging Sea Island’s Software existing HURREVAC system and software expertise, there will be no delay in the

HURREVAC system, allowing the total userbase capacity to be supported throughout the year.

o There have also been significant changes to data inputs over the past 5 years, requiring HURREVAC to be developed, operated, and maintained by Sea Island Software, who has the knowledge of the NHC and Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) meteorologic product ingest formats (i.e. Grib2) and emergency management data (e.g. Hurricane Evacuation Studies data outputs). During the current contract, Sea Island Software worked closely with the NHP, NHC, and emergency management community nationwide to ensure that critical meteorological datasets were properly converted to acceptable ingest formats, and a tracking system (GitHUB) was established to manage software/ coding changes in order to support their proper implementation within the user interface system. A new contractor would require a level of knowledge not currently held by other vendors because Sea Island Software has been the developer, operator, and maintainer working with Federal, State and Local emergency management agencies since the creation of the HURREVAC program and through its entire transition to a platform which is currently accessed by 21,500 users. A new contractor would not only have to educate themselves on the latest NHC and JTWC products/data to understand how they are used in emergency management protocols in order to properly integrate them within the HURREVAC program but would also have to establish a similar system for properly ingesting the latest data formats. A one-year delay would fail to provide the program with continuity during the hurricane season and would impact the ability for the program to continue to ingest the latest NHC and JTWC products as the program would not be fully functional during the transition. Sea Islands Software’s unique highly specialized software functionality experience in understanding meteorological products and how to integrate them within HURREVAC so that they are best used by the emergency management community, enables the program to best support the requirements of the National Hurricane Program.

Furthermore, delays incurred from transferring the system over to a new contractor would further delay new development, operations and maintenance requirements in the new contract. The following sub-bullets further detail the delays which would be incurred by not awarding the contract to Sea Island Software.

o There have been significant upgrades to the HURREVAC system and it’s sub-components throughout the past 5-years (current contract):

In FY20 and FY21, MIT-Lincoln Laboratory developed and transferred Storm Simulation and Self-Training functionalities to the NHP. Through extensive trouble shooting along with system and web-based platform modifications, Sea Island Software was able to integrate the Storm Simulation and Self-Training functionalities into the HURREVAC program where they are now being maintained as sub-components of the program. In FY22 Sea Island Software developed and integrated a new Self-Help System into HURREVAC which provides users quick access to in-depth descriptions of program functionality and data inputs. The minimum one year of delay incurred by the transition to a new contractor would delay the full functionality of HURREVAC and its sub-components, which are to be operated and maintained in the new contract, since the new contractor would have to establish a new geodatabase hosting system which could also deliver critical functionality provided by HURREVAC’s sub-components. Sea Island Software’s software expertise, knowledge of emergency management needs, and familiarity with these unique sub-components, enables them to best support technical support inquiries and bug fixes (required in the operations and maintenance contract).

In FY21, the Real Time Evacuation Planning Model (RtePM) was also integrated into the HURREVAC’s program. RtePM is a restricted-use web-based transportation model designed to capture the impacts of traffic flow along a regional roadway network and calculate evacuation clearance times. The model is used in the development of NHP-led hurricane evacuation studies and allows users to set parameters and conditions including, but not limited to, the area to be evacuated by specifying roadways, the number of evacuees and vehicles involved in the evacuation, the speed at which evacuees respond to evacuation orders, and the destinations that evacuees travel to. The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T) transitioned RtePM to the NHP and it can now be accessed through the HURREVAC (rtepm.hurrevac.com) platform. The web application is currently being maintained as a sub-component of the program through the HURREVAC operations, maintenance, and development contract.

Further development is needed to integrate the functionality into the HURREVAC User Interface. The development needed to better integrate this sub-component is expected to take place within the first 12 months of the new contract. The minimum one year of transition time required if a new contractor were to come on board, would cause this development item to shift to a minimum of 24 months, since the new contractor would have to establish a new geodatabase hosting system first, which would also be able to support HURREVAC’s sub-components. Sea Island Software’s expertise enables them to continue operations through technical support and troubleshooting inquiries (required in the operations and maintenance contract) and development needs for integrating the sub-component into HURREVAC’s user interface.

o Additional development items in the new contract identified in Section 3 are required, as the HURREVAC system is constantly evolving to meet user needs and data inputs requirements (described above). Developments are scoped to take place in the first 12 months of the new contract. The minimum one year of transition time required if a new contractor were to come on board would cause all development item to shift to a minimum of 24 months and delay implementation, since the new contractor would have to first create a new geodatabase hosting system (able to scale to the 25,000-user base), before additional improvements could be made to HURREVAC. Sea Island Software would be able to leverage their existing system and, using their expertise in the HURREVAC software and emergency management needs, execute the required developments within the required contract period of performance.

SUMMARY:

If the government were to transition to a new contractor, then all ongoing and planned HURREVAC program upgrades would be delayed until the new contractor’s web-based platform had completed the transition including the volume of users (up to 25,000) identified above. Sea Island Software was able to maintain the antiquated Desktop platform version while transitioning to the web-based platform. Because of the functionality, capability, and responsiveness to the extensive federal, state and local emergency manager users, a new contractor’s platform would require transition completion before planned and future upgrades could begin. This delay would cause projected and budgeted HURREVAC program development delays of an additional 24 months.

Given these continuous upgrades and transitions to continuously modernize operations, data sharing, learning and reduce/mitigate the impact to life and infrastructure the impact is immeasurable and would affect three hurricane seasons including the current FY22 season.

These unacceptable delays put continuing operational systems at risk and have critical impacts on budgets for current and future years. Even if the government could successfully identify a contractor with the capability, knowledge and historical readiness, it is not realistic to expect another contractor to perform these functions without significant issues and challenges to those Federal, State and local emergency response users. The government would likely need to modify the contract with Sea Island Software to provide oversight of systems and assist a new contractor in challenges associated with transitioning the Sea Island Software. This approach is not viable for the reasons mentioned above.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition:

A Sources Sought Notice was posted from 21 July 2022 to 28 July 2022 requiring interested sources that can fulfill the operation, maintenance, and development of the HURREVAC program to submit a capabilities statement by the closing date for consideration. The sources sought notice included a draft copy of the Performance Work Statement (PWS) and two small businesses responded (see Section 8 & 9).

Effective Competition: Based upon the information in Section 5 above, competition for this action was not feasible.

Subcontracting Competition: A discussion was held with the prime contractor concerning new subcontracting opportunities. The contractor does recognize the need to utilize small businesses when opportunities are present with the services being primarily software based and all employees currently working for Sea Island Software opportunities are limited.

7. Actions to Increase Competition:

To increase competition on future actions, the new contract requires the contractor to further develop detailed user manuals and guides which will allow entities in the future (including the government and other contractors and sub-contractors) to more readily develop, operate, and maintain the system, accelerating a potential transition of the program, if necessary. In addition, the contractor is automating systems for ingesting new data products from the NHC, JTWC, and Hurricane Evacuation Studies, reducing the need for future entities to re-develop systems.

8. Market Research:

Market research was conducted through internet searches, NAICS code searches, reviews of market research results from previous contracts, and discussions with knowledgeable people in government and industry. Dewberry, Geosolutions, CDMSmith, WSP, Disaster Analytics, ODU, I Web 4 U, and General Dynamics Technology (GDI) – all large businesses – were considered during research, but they lacked either the combination of meteorological knowledge, experience assisting emergency managers with tropical cyclone decision making, and lacked experience with maintaining software with a real time data feed.

Furthermore, a Sources Sought Notice was posted from 21 July 2022 to 28 July 2022 requiring interested sources that can fulfill the operation, maintenance, and development of the HURREVAC program to submit a capabilities statement by the closing date for consideration. The sources sought notice included a draft copy of the PWS.

9. Interested Sources:

In response to the sources sought notice, two small businesses submitted capabilities statements and were reviewed: L. Mac Solutions LLC and AIM Technical Group LLC.

L. Mac Solutions LLC company focuses on Health Care Systems and therefore did not demonstrate the necessary knowledge of complex meteorological and emergency management expertise necessary to execute the contract.

Additionally, the capabilities statement did not describe any capabilities in software development, operations, and maintenance.

AIM Technical Group, LLC company seems to have adequate IT capabilities, but does not have any capabilities for emergency management and meteorological decision support programs. Additionally, the capabilities statement did not demonstrate knowledge of complex meteorological and emergency management expertise necessary to execute the contract.

10. Other Facts:

The operation, maintenance, and development of the HURREVAC program was procured with the following previous contracts, all awarded to Sea Island Software.

W912HQ-10-D-0006-0017 awarded 1/19/2012 for $344,743.48 (2012 HURREVAC Operations and Maintenance, Program Development, and Training)

W912HQ-10-D-0006-0027 awarded 2/15/2013 for $360,122.90 (2013 HURREVAC Operations and Maintenance, Program Development, and Training)

W912BU-10-D-0002-0016 awarded 5/20/2014 for $382,260.00 (2014 HURREVAC Operations and Maintenance, Program Development, and Training)

W912DR-15-C-0014 awarded 3/24/2015 for $397,750.00 (2015 HURREVAC Operations and Maintenance, Program Development, and Training)

W912DR-16-C-0010 awarded 4/22/2016 for $420,936.00 (2016 HURREVAC Operations and Maintenance, Program Development, and Training)

W912DR-17-P-0118 awarded 9/17/2017 for $4,380,190.89 (2017 Next Generation Web-Based Hurricane Evacuation Decision Support Platform)

Except for contract W912DR-17-P-0118, all contracts were procured sole source under the same authority (previously 10 U.S.C. 2304(c)(1)), as implemented by FAR 6.302-1 and DFARS 206.302-1, “Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.” Sea Island Software is the developer of the HURREVAC program. They are responsible for operations, maintenance and upgrade, and training of the program. Sea Island Software is the only known entity with technical operational knowledge of the program, including critical programming and data feed requirements. No other known contractor would be able to take over these tasks without a significant amount of training, capability, and infrastructure development.

Contract W912DR-17-P-0118 was competed full and open due to new requirements that increased the scope from the previous contracts. The contract was ultimately awarded to the incumbent, Sea Island Software, who was the only source that submitted an acceptable proposal, demonstrating the necessary software, meteorologic, and emergency management experience required to successfully operate, maintain, and develop the HURREVAC program.

A new sole source follow-on contract allows for continuity of operations, maintenance and continued development of the HURREVAC program that provides support to Federal, state, and local emergency operators throughout the continental United States and its territories. As indicated within the “Reasons for Authority Cited” the implications of transitioning to a new contractor would require a minimum of one year for transition of the web-based program to a new contractor, and delays estimated at an additional one-year to transition and integrate ongoing and planned HURREVAC program developments. Given the Pacific coast hurricane season is continuous, and the Atlantic and Gulf coast hurricane seasons occur between June to November annually, delays or any challenges with system use and accessibility put significant lives and property at risk due to poor data configuration and distribution.

11. Technical Certification:

I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance, which are included in the justification, are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Signature:

Typed Na

Title: National Hurricane Program Manager

12. Requirements Certification:

I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance, which are included in the justification, are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Signature:

Typed Nam

Title: Requirements Representatives

13. Fair and Reasonable Cost Determination:

I hereby determine that the anticipated cost to the Government for this contract action will be fair and reasonable using FAR 6.302-1 and DFARS 206.302-1. Certified cost or pricing data will be required pursuant to FAR 15.403-4.

Signature: ___

Typed Name:

Title: Contracting Officer

14. Contracting Officer Certification:

I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Signature: ___

Typed Name:

Approval

Based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the procurement of the operations, maintenance, and development of the HURREVAC program, estimated at , on an other than full and open competition basis pursuant to the authority of 10 U.S.C.

3204 as implemented by FAR 6.302-1(a)(2)(iii) and DFARS 206.302-1, “Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements,” subject to availability of funds, and provided that the services herein described have otherwise been authorized for this acquisition.

Signature: _

Typed Nam

Title: Alternate Advocate for Competition