A04 Justificaiton and Approval.pdf

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

WASHINGTON HEADQUARTERS SERVICES

1155 DEFENSE PENTAGON

WASHINGTON, DC 20301-1155

ACQUISITION DIRECTORATE

Control No. 2020-WHS-0208

SOLE SOURCE JUSTIFICATION UNDER SIMPLIFIED PROCEDURES

FOR CERTAIN COMMERCIAL ITEMS

UNDER FEDERAL ACQUISITION REGULATION (FAR) 13.5

1. AGENCY AND CONTRACTING ACTIVITY: The Agency is Defense POW/MIA

Accounting Agency (DPAA), Policy and Plans Directorate. The Contracting Activity is The Department of Defense, Washington Headquarters Services (WHS), and Acquisition Directorate

(AD).

2. DESCRIPTION OF ACTION: WHS/AD proposes to issue a 5-month sole source Firm Fixed Price (FFP) contract with one (1) 5-month option period to the incumbent, NA Alii Consulting and Sales, LLC. This sole source contract would provide for the continuation of contractor support for a critical DPAA document digitization effort and would allow the incumbent contractor to complete the tasks of digitizing the remaining 75,000 records “Individual Decease Personnel Files”. The document digitization is currently being performed under task order GS- 00Q17GWD2214/HQ003419F0672. The period of performance for this expires on September 29, 2020.

3. DESCRIPTION OF SUPPLIES/SERVICES: DPAA’s document digitization requires a contractor to provide support services for the ongoing critical operations and sustainment to DPAA CMS platforms and meet National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) requirements. The estimated total price for this FFP contract is $1,923,308.80 as shown in the table below.

Performance Periods

Performance Period Dates Amount

Base Period September 30, 2020-Febuary 28,2021 $969,154.40 Option Period March 1, 2021-July 29, 2021 $954,154.40 Total Award for Base & Option Period: $1,923,308.80

4. AUTHORITY CITED: This action is under the procedures of Federal Acquisition Regulation

(FAR) 13.5 under the authority of:

☒41 U.S.C. 1901, Simplified Acquisition Procedures ☐41 U.S.C. 1903, Special Emergency Procurement Authority

5. REASON FOR AUTHORITY CITED: On 29 September 2019, the Government awarded task order no. GS-00Q17GWD2214/HQ003419F0672, under the 8(a) STARS GSA II contract, to NA Alii, for document digitization services. The original period of performance is 29 September

2019 to 28 September 2020 and involved the digitization of approximately 130,000 boxes of documents for purposes of complying with NARA requirements.

Approximately five months after performance began, COVID-19 started affecting the St. Louis, MO area, where the contract was being performed, and this has caused the vendor to adjust hours to meet federal and state social distancing requirements. The contractor had to split the workforce by 50 % to meet social distancing guidelines. This caused delays in digitizing the documents and, as a result, 70,000 boxes of physical records remain to be processed as of the end of the period performance. The Government is unable to modify or extend the current contract because the incumbent has since graduated from the 8(a) program.

If this contract is not continued, the government will need to transport the remaining 70,000 boxes to a new contractor’s facility for storage. The cost to transport and store the boxes at a new contractor’s facility will exceed more than $100,000 per month, or the cost to the government to store the boxes of files over the next 10 months could exceed $1,000,000.00. This additional logistical cost of $1,000,000.00 only includes transportation of the files, facility space, security of the files, labor to transport the files to and from the old facility and facility fire protection equipment.

The added cost to re-start operations will be over $1.5 million dollars. The new vendor will be expected to buy at least 20 new scanning station, supplies for the new scanning stations, hire 22 new staff members, and train the new staff on how to scan the documents to DPAA requirements.

This by itself represents a financial burden and duplication of cost to the Government. DPAA, does NOT have funding programmed to continue digitization efforts of Individual Deceased Personnel Files, after July 2021. If this current contract is not continued, DPAA will be forced to decide if multiple planned field mission to recover US Services members remains lost in the Nation’s past conflicts will have to be postponed, in order to provide funding to cover this unplanned financial burden.

In addition, the government would have to pay the administrative startup cost to find a new vendor, expected to be more than $50,000. Administrative cost includes, contracting actions, training, and labor hours to process documents. In addition, the possibility of legal cost for failure to provide the scanned Individual Deceased Personnel Files (IDPFs) documents as order by the US Court to the plaintiff by the July 2021.

Finally, DPAA does not have a facility to store the Records or the resources to transport 70,000 boxes of IDPF Records from the incumbent’s facility back to its offices in Arlington, VA and Honolulu, HI. The incumbent also has more than 50,000 Records that have been digitized but is unable to send to the National Archives and Records Administration due to the COVID-19 restrictions. All factors mentioned above would represent a significant duplication of cost to the Government, if the Government were to award to a different contractor. Those cost again includes; transport and storage of the boxes at a new contractor’s facility; facility space, security of the files, labor to transport the files to and from the new facility, facility fire protection, startup cost and administrative cost. The total direct cost to use a different vendor will be more than $3 million and would take an additional 12 months to complete the project. The incumbent is in a unique position to be the only source that can process 70,000 boxes of physical records and ensure that DPAA can meet a mandatory federal legal requirement to provide all digitized IDPFs by June 2021 in order to avoid additional judicial scrutiny.

6. EFFORTS TO OBTAIN COMPETITION: WHS/AD issued a Notice of Intent to Sole Source via a Special Notice on beta.SAM.gov on August 24, 2020 with a response date of September 7, 2020. No vendors responded to the notice to challenge the sole source contract to NA Ali’i Consulting and Sales, LLC.

7. FAIR AND REASONABLE COST DETERMINATION: IAW FAR 15.404-1(b)(2)(v): The

Government compared proposed priced to the Independent Government cost estimate which was based on historical prices paid from the current task order. The Contracting Officer determined that proposed price was significantly lower than the Independent Government cost estimate; therefore, the Contracting Officer determined that proposed price for this 10-month sole source contract was fair and reasonable.

8. MARKET RESEARCH: Market research has been limited to the pre-solicitation notice described under efforts to obtain competition, which was posted for 15 days on beta.sam.gov.

No vendors challenged this effort.

9. ANY OTHER FACTS SUPPORTING THE USE OF SOLE SOURCE: N/A

10. INTERESTED SOURCES: To date, no other sources have expressed interest in writing to this sole source action.

11. ACTIONS TO INCREASE COMPETITION: This will be a follow-on bridge effort for Na’Ali to continue and complete the required services within a total of 10 months. If DPAA has a continued need for these services after the completion of the follow-on bridge, they will conduct market research to seek for another 8(a) company or compete it amongst the 8(a)’s.

☒Yes. A copy of the previous justification is attached. The actions to remove any barriers to competition cited on the previous justification ☐ were ☐ were not completed [Must include explanation of why the answer is “no”].

☒No. The original acquisition was conducted on a competitive basis.

☒Not Applicable. This is a new requirement.

CERTIFICATION

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

Kevin L. West , DPAA Date Contracting Officer Representative/Program Office

Ricardo M. Vasquez Date Contracting Officer, WHS/AD

APPROVAL

This justification is approved.

David H. Kao Date Competition Advocate, WHS/AD