A38_JEFO_USACE_Standalone_TO_Final_(1)_Redacted_1.pdf

United States Department of the Interior

INTERIOR BUSINESS CENTER

Washington, DC 20240

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

AUTHORITY: FAR 16.505(b)(2)

SOLICITATION # 140D0424Q0926

1. Identification of the agency and the contracting activity, and specific identification of the document as a “Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity.”

This document is a Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity for the Department of the Interior (DOI), Interior Business Center (IBC), Acquisition Services Directorate (AQD), Division I/Branch II on behalf of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).

2. Nature and/or description of the action being approved.

This is a logical follow-on requirement for USACE Civil Works Business Intelligence (CWBI) program cloud services in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 16, to maintain the continuity of services previously competed and procured under the DOI Foundation Cloud Hosting Services (FCHS) Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract D13PC00023, task order D15PD00500. All FCHS IDIQ contract holders were afforded fair opportunity. This requirement will be sole sourced to Zivaro Inc, 3900 E Mexico Avenue, Denver, CO 80210-3945.

Currently, these services are provided to USACE by Zivaro through a task order off the DOI FCHS IDIQ. The current FCHS IDIQ contracts are due to expire October 27, 2024, allowing the performance of task orders to continue until October 27, 2025. The new FCHS2 IDIQ Task Order 140D0424F0755 was awarded for GeoPlatform which contains over 40 projects; however, USACE does not want to continue under the task order managed by the DOI Office of the Chief Information Officer. USACE requested a separate task order for their requirement specific to USACE program needs that will be managed by USACE versus DOI. USACE has the need to continue services with the existing contractor, Zivaro, until a transition can occur without interruption to essential services.

3. A description of the supplies or services required to meet the agency’s needs (including the estimated value).

USACE Civil Works Business Intelligence (CWBI) program seeks cloud professional services to operate, maintain, and develop systems, data, applications, and information related primarily to its Civil Works mission. The USACE Civil Works mission is varied and wide-ranging and provides benefits for navigation, flood risk management, hydropower production, environmental stewardship, recreation, irrigation and municipal water supply, emergency response and recovery, and other critical services to the Nation. CWBI is a combination of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). CWBI requires trained and accredited cloud engineers to execute technical tasks associated with its existing

Amazon Web Services (AWS) GovCloud environment to ensure its growing user base has continuous access, responsive capability, innovation, scalability, and cost-savings opportunities.

The cloud professional services contractor must be capable of operating and maintaining the existing environment and supported modules, as well as develop, modernize, and enhance the environment based on USACE, CWBI, and partner input. The contractor will be responsible for working with the CWBI Program Management Office (PMO), CWBI System Engineering Team, CWBI Cybersecurity Team, USACE CIO/G-6, USACE module owners, contractors, and others.

The period of performance will be a six-month base period, with one (1) six-month option period as follows: Base Period 10/28/2024 – 04/27/2025; Option Period 1 04/28/2025 – 10/27/2025.

The estimated value is for the six-month base period and one (1) six-month option period.

4. Identification of the exception to fair opportunity (see 16.505(b)(2)) and the supporting rationale, including a demonstration that the proposed contractor’s unique qualifications or the nature of the acquisition requires use of the exception cited. If the contracting officer uses the logical follow-on exception, the rationale shall describe why the relationship between the initial order and the follow-on is logical (e.g., in terms of scope, period of performance, or value).

FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(C) – The order must be issued on a sole-source basis in the interest of economy and efficiency because it is a logical follow-on to an order already issued under the contract, provided that all awardees were given a fair opportunity to be considered for the original order.

The scope of the logical follow-on task order is the same as the initial task order that was competed amongst FCHS1 contract holders under task order D15PD00500. To avoid a loss of resources and the risk to the systems that depend on the cloud environment, it is prudent to continue the existing services with Zivaro for six-months, with a six-month option period to prepare systems for the transition and recompete this requirement under FCHS2.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Civil Works Business Intelligence (CWBI) program is an enterprise cloud-based IT investment focused on the delivery of Civil Works data and applications internally as well as to the public. CWBI includes more than 30 Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounts and over 50 different AWS Software as a Service (SaaS) capabilities.

CWBI is home to more than 145 different applications that support the USACE Civil Works mission. This includes critical lifesaving and life-supporting applications in navigation, flood risk management, natural resources management, regulatory, water management, water supply, asset management, budget management, infrastructure, and project management. If CWBI experienced a lapse in service related to cloud professional services, the impacts would be tremendous. Zivaro as the current incumbent has the intimate knowledge of the current systems and currently provides the professional services necessary to maintain critical systems hosted in the could environment which makes them uniquely qualified to meet the current requirement.

Without an adequate transition timeline, there is not another vendor available to transition services without negatively impacting the USACE mission. The overall impact of a lapse in service is detailed below as each of these instances are maintained and managed by Zivaro through this requirement. All mentioned cloud professional services and hosting are provided by Zivaro personnel who directly manage each identified system below.

USACE is required by law to ensure most Civil Works data is available to the public. For example, 33 USC Ch. 46 requires levee data delivery, and Public Law 92-367 requires dam data delivery. If USACE was unable to deliver this data, then it would be in violation of its legal requirements. CWBI hosts the National Levee Database and National Inventory of Dams, which is reliant on cloud professional services for successful data delivery, cloud infrastructure, and cybersecurity compliance.

CWBI hosts multiple emergency management systems. This includes the primary resource used by USACE Emergency Support Function #3 (ESF3) staff to deliver Public Works and Engineering support to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under the Stafford Act. If these systems were not available, then USACE would be significantly limited in its ability to deliver public works and engineering requirements to FEMA, States, Territories, and Tribes. CWBI is dependent on cloud professional services to manage and deliver ESF3 solutions.

USACE is reliant on CWBI for delivering so many of its day-to-day data requirements in supporting the Civil Works mission. For example, if CWBI had a lapse in service, then the public would not be able to submit permit requests as required by the Clean Water Act and Rivers and Harbor Act. USACE would also have no way to process the data internally. CWBI uses cloud professional services to ensure its OMBIL Regulatory Module and Regulatory Request System function properly. If these systems were not supported, USACE would fail in its commitment to deliver regulatory services.

CWBI is contingent on existing cloud professional services for all its cloud infrastructure and database change requests, patching, and vulnerability remediation. If cloud professional services were to stop or be delayed, CWBI would be out of compliance with DoD cybersecurity and risk management framework requirements. This would jeopardize the program’s Authority to Operate (ATO) and lead to servers being quarantined by the Army. As a result, data would be inaccessible, and 145 systems would not work.

The USACE Chief Information Officer is actively closing existing on-premises USACE data centers and has mandated all resources migrate to the cloud NLT 30 SEP 2025. If CWBI was unable to continue to migrate on-premises resources to the cloud, then it would be unable to meet the CIO requirement to complete cloud migration by the specified date.

USACE’s current FCHS cloud services task order is due to expire on October 27, 2024, and there isn’t sufficient time to fully migrate services over to another vendor due to the limited amount of time between orders. Furthermore, the USACE is no longer participating in the FCHS2 GeoPlatform Task Order which currently supports up to 40 projects with various bureaus and agencies. A separate task order is sought to be competed on FCHS2 and a justification is sought to prevent a lapse in service. Issuing a competitive task order for these services and managing a transition to another contractor simply to bridge the gap between FCHS and FCHS2 would result in an unnecessary expenditure of resources, such as but not limited to a change in solution and labor which would be duplicate of cost in the estimated amount of $618,980.00 (transition period).

5. A determination by the contracting officer that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable.

This requirement is being procured under the DOI FCHS IDIQ Contract D13PC00023. A price analysis was done for the base awards in accordance with FAR 15.305(a)(1) to ensure that a fair and reasonable price is paid by the Government. Reasonableness of proposed prices was established in accordance with FAR 15.403-1(c)(1)(i)(B). The AQD Contracting Officer will seek further discounts and use historical pricing, along with making a separate determination as to the reasonableness of the price quote prior to awarding the follow-on task order.

6. Any other facts supporting the justification.

None.

7. A statement of the actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers that led to the exception to fair opportunity before any subsequent acquisition for the supplies or services is made.

The USACE will work with DOI to closely scrutinize any subsequent requests to renew task orders for CWBI cloud services and will ensure that competitive barriers, if any, are mitigated or removed to the maximum extent practicable. It is the Government’s intent to immediately solicit and compete this requirement under a new task order through FCHS2. In any event, the recompete is not executed prior to the end of the base period, a competitive task order will be issued prior to the end six-month option period.