Attach 5 - FAR 52.212-2 Addendum (8 JAN 2024).pdf

Solicitation Addendum to FAR 52.212-2

FA462124Q0008

ADDENDUM to FAR 52.212-2

THIS SECTION IS FOR SOLICITATION PURPOSES ONLY. THIS SECTION WILL BE

PHYSICALLY REMOVED FROM ANY RESULTANT AWARD BUT WILL BE DEEMED

INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE.

For the purposes of this Solicitation, the terms, "Offer", "Offeror", and "Proposal" are hereby changed to "Quote", "Vendor", and "Quotation”.

I. BASIS FOR AWARD

BASIS FOR CONTRACT AWARD: This competitive acquisition will be made using simplified acquisition procedures (SAP) established in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) subpart 13.5. Specifically, this acquisition will be made utilizing Best Value Determination with Subjective Trade-off Techniques where technical and past performance, when combined, are significantly more important than price in accordance with procedures as identified in the Addendum to FAR 52.212-2. Procedures contained in FAR parts 14, 15 and Department of Defense source selection procedures are NOT being used for this acquisition and shall NOT be implied by the contractor. The Government intends to award one contract as a result of this solicitation. A decision on the technical acceptability, past performance evaluation and price reasonableness of each quotation will be made. While the Government will strive for maximum objectivity, the tradeoff process, by its nature, is subjective; therefore, professional judgement is implicit throughout the soliciting competition using SAP process. Contractors are reminded that the Government will only evaluate one quotation from each contractor. Award will be made to the responsible contractor whose quotation conforms to all required terms and conditions, includes all representations and certifications, meets all requirements set forth in the RFQ and provides the best value to the Government based on the results of the evaluation as described in the section II Evaluation Procedures below. At a minimum, a past performance rating of Satisfactory Expectation shall be required for consideration of award. The Government may conduct interchanges with one, some, none or all contractors at its discretion during the evaluation phase of this acquisition. NOTE:

Interchange(s) is defined herein as: interactions between the Contracting Officer and contractor(s), after the receipt of quotations that are undertaken with the intent to address any aspect of the quotations. The Government reserves the right to trade-off to a higher priced, greater rater past performance quotation if determined to be in the best interest of the Government. The evaluation process shall proceed as follows:

Step One: the Government shall review each quotation received in response to the solicitation to verify the submitted quotation meets all required terms and conditions. At a minimum, the quotation shall include a technical volume, past performance volume and a price volume. Any quotation not providing all three volumes shall be determined non-responsive and therefore become ineligible for consideration of contract award. Upon becoming ineligible for contract award, the respective quotation shall not receive a past performance and price evaluation. Respective contractor(s) will be notified of their removal from the competition within three business days.

Step Two: the Government shall sort all quotations in ascending order by total evaluated price.

Step Three: the Government shall conduct technical, past performance and price evaluations to all sorted quotations beginning with the lowest priced quotation (evaluating the lowest three priced quotations in ascending order). Individual evaluations shall follow the procedures contained in the section II Evaluation Procedures below (the section details the evaluation procedures for Factors I, II, and III). Evaluation(s) shall cease once a quotation receives an acceptable technical evaluation and acceptable price determination, in addition to receiving a substantial expectation past performance evaluation—per section II below— regardless of how many quotations remain to be evaluated. However, if all three lowest priced quotations receive an acceptable technical evaluation and acceptable price determination, but none of the three receives a substantial past performance expectation, the Government shall move to step four of the evaluation. (In other words, if the three lowest price quotations are technically acceptable and are determined to have an acceptable price volume, but all three receive a past performance evaluation of satisfactory expectation or below (satisfactory expectation/limited expectation/no expectation/unknown expectation), the Government shall move to step four of the evaluation.

Step Four: the Government shall evaluate—one at a time—the remaining quotations in ascending sequential order of price beginning with the fourth lowest priced quotation for technical, past performance and price until a quotation receives a past performance rating of substantial expectation. Following section II procedures below, once a quotation receives an acceptable technical evaluation (technical volume evaluated for meeting the requirements in DFARS 252.237-7024) and an acceptable price determination (price volume evaluated for completeness, balance, and reasonableness), in addition to receiving a past performance rating of substantial expectation, the overall evaluation shall be considered complete (and shall cease), regardless of how many unevaluated quotations remain.

II. EVALUATION PROCEDURES - Per steps three and four above, each quotation shall be evaluated as follows:

A. Factor I: Technical Volume

i. An evaluation of technical acceptability of each offeror’s technical capability shall be made. The contracting officer may conduct interchanges with offerors to determine technical acceptability of their quotation in accordance with solicitation requirements. The basis for evaluation of technical capability is described below. At a minimum, the technical capability quotation shall consist of the following:

Subfactor 1 – Mission Essential Contractor Services Plan

Description: The Mission-Essential Contractor Services Plan must meet the requirements established in Department of Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement Provision 252.237-7024, Notice of Continuation of Essential Contractor Services.

The Government’s evaluation team shall evaluate overall technical capability on an acceptable/unacceptable basis. All factors of the technical capability quotation must be determined acceptable using the descriptions in table 1 below for the technical capability to receive an acceptable rating. If any of the factors are determined to be unacceptable, the technical capability quotation will receive an unacceptable rating.

Technical Capability Rating. The technical capability rating provides an evaluation of the quality of the offeror’s solution for meeting the Government’s requirements. The technical capability area will receive one of the ratings described in table 1 below. The focus of the technical rating is to identify if the contractor has an adequate approach and understanding of the requirement. This rating will be based on the Government’s technical knowledge and historical data.

Table 1.

B. Factor II: Past Performance Volume

i. Past performance will be evaluated on recency and relevancy. Each contractor will receive an integrated overall performance expectation in accordance with the evaluation process described in Table 3 below. Past performance will be evaluated as a measure of the Government’s expectation in the contractor’s ability to successfully perform based on previous and current contract efforts.

ii. For the purpose of this evaluation, “recent” is defined as performance occurring within the last five years from the date of release of this solicitation.

Table 2 below defines relevancy as it applies to each citation reviewed:

Table 2.

Rating Definition

Very Relevant Present/past performance effort involved essentially the same scope and magnitude of effort and complexities this solicitation requires.

Relevant Present/past performance effort involved similar scope and magnitude of effort and complexities this solicitation requires.

Somewhat Relevant

Present/past performance effort involved some of the scope and magnitude of effort and complexities this solicitation requires.

Not Relevant Present/past performance effort involved none of the scope and magnitude of effort and complexities this solicitation requires.

Technical Acceptable/Unacceptable Ratings Rating: Description:

Acceptable Proposal clearly meets the minimum requirements of the solicitiation.

Unacceptable Proposal does not clearly meet the minimum requirements of the solicitation.

iii. The Government will use past performance information/past performance questionnaire responses submitted by the contractors’ references, other sources such as other federal government offices, Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS)/Contractor Performance Assessment Reports (CPARS) and private and commercial sources. The Government is not bound by the contractor’s opinion of relevancy. Relevancy is defined above. More relevant past performance will be a stronger predictor of future success and have more influence on the past performance evaluation than past performance of lesser relevance. Consideration will be given to whether the past performance information is applicable to the prime contractor, teaming partners and/or joint venture actually performing that part of the requirement.

This information may include efforts performed by other divisions, critical subcontractors, or teaming contractors, if such resources will be utilized for the current effort.

iv. Where the relevant past and present performance record indicates performance problems, the Government will consider the number and severity of the problems and the appropriateness and effectiveness of any corrective actions taken (not just planned or promised). The Government may review more recent contracts, or performance evaluations, to ensure corrective actions have been implemented and to evaluate their effectiveness. If the contractor clearly demonstrates management actions employed in overcoming problems and the effects of those actions, in terms of improvements achieved or problems rectified, this may allow the contractor to be rated higher than might otherwise be indicated. The Government will evaluate/assess all past performance information, positive and negative. Contractors will be afforded the opportunity to respond to negative past performance reports if they had not had the opportunity to do so previously. Any contractor without a record of relevant past performance will receive a past performance rating of unknown expectation (neutral). The minimum required expectation rating shall be satisfactory expectation for consideration of award.

v. Each contractor will be assessed a Past Performance Expectation Rating described below, taking into account the recency, relevancy and quality of each citation reviewed. The Contracting Officer may make phone calls or send e-mails to contractors’ references/past performance questionnaire respondents as necessary during evaluation to ask for additional information pertaining to past performance. The Contracting Officer shall make an integrated assessment of the quotations received to determine best value. As such, this may result in award to a higher priced, greater rated past performance quotation.

Table 3.

PAST PERFORMANCE EXPECTATION RATING

Rating Description

Substantial Expectation

Based on the contractor’s recent/relevant performance record, the Government has a high expectation that the contractor will successfully perform the required effort.

Satisfactory Expectation

Based on the contractor’s recent/relevant performance record, the Government has a reasonable expectation that the contractor will successfully perform the required effort.

Limited Expectation Based on the contractor’s recent/relevant performance record, the Government has a low expectation that the contractor will successfully perform the required effort.

No Expectation Based on the contractor’s recent/relevant performance record, the Government has no expectation that the contractor will be able to successfully perform the required effort.

Unknown Expectation (Neutral)

No recent/relevant performance record is available or the contractor’s performance record is so sparse that no meaningful expectation rating can be reasonably assigned. The contractor may not be evaluated favorably or unfavorably on the factor of past performance.

C. Factor III: Price Volume

i. Quoted prices will be determined by multiplying the quantities identified in the Pricing Schedule by the quoted unit price for each Sub Contract Line Item Number (SubCLIN) to confirm the extended amount of each. To determine acceptability of the Price Volume, the contractor will be evaluated for completeness, balance, and reasonableness of the quoted evaluated price.

ii. The Government may determine that a quotation is unacceptable if the prices quoted are significantly unbalanced. Evaluation of options shall not obligate the Government to exercise the option(s).

iii. Unbalanced Pricing: The Government will analyze quotations to determine if they are unbalanced which despite potentially having an acceptable total evaluated price, one or more line items may be significantly over or understated when compared to the Independent Government Cost Estimate. A quotation may be rejected if the contracting officer determines that the lack of balance poses an unacceptable risk to the Government.

iv. Completeness: Contractors are required to submit pricing on all items listed on the pricing schedule (attached to the solicitation) as reflected on the SF 1449.

v. Reasonableness: The quotation will be evaluated to ensure it is fair and reasonable, pursuant to FAR 13.106.

vi. For evaluation purposes only, in order to evaluate FAR clause 52.217-8, the

Government will calculate 50% of the contractor’s option year 4 pricing and tally this amount with the total evaluated price to reflect pricing that will be utilized should the Government exercise its right under this clause authority.

Contractors shall NOT include this price with its quotation.

vii. The contracting officer may conduct interchanges with offerors regarding their price volume in accordance with solicitation requirements.

III. CONTRACTOR RESPONSIBILITY

Prior to award, a responsibility determination will be made as described in FAR Part 9.

As stated in FAR 13.004(a), a quotation is not an offer and, consequently, cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. Therefore, issuance by the Government of an order in response to a supplier’s quotation does not establish a contract. The order is an offer by the Government to the supplier to buy certain supplies or services upon specified terms and conditions. A contract is established when the supplier accepts the offer.