Attachment 2_Instructions to Offerors and Basis for Award.pdf

Simplified Acquisition Proposal Request (SAPR), Attachment 2

SAPR# (FA481424TF054)

Instructions to Offerors & Basis for Award

1. Instructions to Offerors

A. Failure to submit a proposal by the closing date and time shall result in exclusion from consideration. Prior to submitting a proposal, the offeror shall be actively registered in System for Award Management (SAM), per FAR 52.204-7 System for Award Management. Online registration and instructions may be accomplished at www.sam.gov. By submitting a proposal, the offeror acknowledges the requirement to be registered in the SAM prior to award, during performance, and through final payment of any contract resulting from the solicitation. To be eligible for award, the offeror must be registered in SAM under the appropriate business category and NAICS code. In addition, unless available via SAM (i.e., www.sam.gov) offerors are also to include a completed copy of their Representations and Certifications as per FAR 52.212-3, Offeror Representations and Certifications-Commercial Items. All proposals must be held valid for 120 days.

B. Offerors must clearly identify any exception to SAPR terms and conditions and must provide complete supporting rationale. The Government reserves the right to determine any such exceptions are unacceptable. Any exception determined unacceptable by the Government may result in the Offeror’s proposal being determined unacceptable and ineligible for award. This information shall be provided in the format and content of the table below within the Offerors proposal cover letter. If no exceptions are taken, include a statement stating so within the proposal cover letter.

SAPR Exceptions

SAPR

Document

Page/ Paragraph

Requirement/ Portion

Rationale

PWS,

ITO,

Evaluation Factor, etc.

Applicable Page and Paragraph Numbers

Identify the requirement or portion to which exception is taken

Describe why the requirement can/will not be met

C. Discrepancies. If an Offeror believes that the requirements in these instructions contain an error, omission, or are otherwise unsound, the Offeror shall immediately notify the CO in writing with supporting rationale as well as the remedies the Offeror is asking the CO to consider as related to the omission or error.

D. Interchanges are fluid interaction(s) between the Contracting Officer (CO) and the Offerors that may address any aspect of the proposal and may or may not be documented in real time.

The Government intends to make award based on the initial proposal submissions without conducting interchanges. Therefore, each offer should contain the Offeror’s best terms from a price and technical standpoint. However, the Government reserves the right to hold interchanges using Interchange Notices (INs) if, during the evaluation, it is determined to be in the best interest of the Government. Offeror responses to INs will be considered in making the award selection decision. Interchanges may be conducted with one, some or all offerors as the Government is not required to conduct interchanges with any or all Offerors responding to this

SAPR.

E. FORMAT AND CRITERIA. The non-price portion proposal shall be organized to correspond with the Performance Work Statement and submitted in an 8½-in X 11-in format using 12-point Times New Roman type and 1-in margins. Use of graphics shall be minimized. Text within tables and graphics may be smaller, if necessary, but shall be legible and readable when printed.

All proposals shall be in the described format and contain the information necessary, and in sufficient detail, to clearly satisfy the requirements described in this SAPR. If an offeror fails to submit their proposal with the required information, in sufficient detail and as stated in this SAPR, they may be considered non-responsive and, therefore, may be eliminated from further award consideration at any stage of the evaluation process. Proposals shall include the following within the page limits as specified. Pages or written material exceeding the number specified will not be considered in the evaluation by the Government. Title pages, table of contents acronym pages, page reference charts, and CPAR reports are excluded from the page count specified below. If final revisions are requested, separate page limitations will be specified in the Government’s request for that submission.

VOLUME REFERENCE TITLE

MAXIMUM

NUMBER OF

PAGES

Cover Letter 2 Pages (one-sided)

I

Factor 1 Technical Approach

10 Pages (one-sided) Sub-factor 1.1 Staffing Plan

Sub-factor 1.2 Management Plan

II Factor 2 Past Performance 3 Pages (one-sided)

III Factor 3 Price Shall be IAW

Pricing Worksheet

The offeror’s submission of volumes one (I), and two (II), shall include a page reference chart that identifies the page numbers from the offeror’s proposal submission that provides the offeror’s response to particular evaluation factors. No price information shall be included in the Cover Letter or in volumes I and II. For each evaluation factor, the Government will only evaluate the pages that an offeror includes on their page reference chart.

(i) Cover Letter:

Cover Letter shall include Offerors’ small business status/categories, company primary and alternate points of contact with email/phone and who is authorized to contractually obligate the company, regional SBA contact information, CAGE Code, DUNS number, a statement that the company understands the requirements specified and will meet the performance standards and requirements therein, a statement that the company does or does not take exception to any of the requirements of this SAPR, and/or specific information if proposing a teaming arrangement.

(ii) Volume I:

The Technical Proposal should be specific and complete. Legibility, clarity, and coherence are very important. Your responses will be evaluated against the Technical subfactors. Provide as specifically as possible the actual methodology you would use for accomplishing/satisfying the subfactors. It is not sufficient to simply restate or rephrase the Government’s requirements in the PWS. Rather, the offeror shall demonstrate in their own words a thoughtful and convincing business approach to address how the offeror intends to perform based on each evaluation criteria for the specific requirement.

(iii) Volume II:

Provide a list of no less or more than three (3), of the most recent and relevant contracts performed within the last Five (5) years from the release date of this SAPR.

Information shall include company and/or agency contact information, identifying contract information (i.e. contract #’s), addresses, and the nature of the contract performance. At least one (1) shall be from the Federal Government (includes U.S.

Department of Defense).

(iv) Volume III:

The offeror shall submit pricing information to support the completeness and reasonableness of their proposed prices for all CLINs. The pricing information submitted should fully support the PWS requirements for each major functional element specified in the PWS. Reference pricing worksheet.

2. Basis for Award & Evaluation Factors:

A. This is a competitive simplified acquisition selection conducted in accordance with (IAW) Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 13. Contracts awarded under FAR 13 are not subject to FAR 15.3 procedures. The acquisition evaluation will be conducted utilizing the Best Value – Tradeoff Process, which seeks to select a proposal with the best value to meet the Government’s need. Best value is defined as the expected outcome of an acquisition that, in the Government’s estimation, provides the greatest overall benefit in response to the requirement, in accordance with FAR 2.101. The Government reserves the right to reject any proposal that includes any assumption or condition that impacts or adversely affects the Government’s requirement.

B. Award will be made in accordance with the procedures specified in the SAPR, to the Offeror whose proposal results in the best value to the Government. An order may be awarded to the offeror who is deemed responsible IAW FAR 9.1, as supplemented, whose proposal conforms to the SAPR’s requirements (to include all stated terms, conditions, representations, certifications, and all other information required by the SAPR instructions) and is judged, based on the evaluation factors and subfactors, to represent the best value to the Government.

C. Following receipt of responses to this SAPR, the Government will perform a comparative analysis (comparing Offeror proposals to the requirements of the SAPR) in order to select the offeror that is best suited to fulfill the requirements of the SAPR. The comparative analysis will be based on the Offeror’s responses to the factors/subfactors outlined in the SAPR, given their stated relative order of importance.

D. Once the Government determines the Offeror that is best-suited to meet stated requirements, the Government reserves the right to communicate with only that Offeror to address any issues, if necessary, and finalize an award with that Offeror. If the parties cannot successfully resolve outstanding issues, as determined pertinent at the sole discretion of the Government, the Government may communicate with the next best-suited Offeror, based on the original analysis and address any necessary issues with that Offeror. If the government begins interchanges with the next best-suited Offeror, no further communications with the previous Offeror will be entertained until after order award. This process will continue until an agreement is successfully reached and an order is awarded.

E. Evaluation Factors. Regarding the relative importance of each factor: Within the Technical Approach, subfactor 1.1 and subfactor 1.2 are of equal importance. All evaluation factors other than cost or price, when combined are significantly more important than cost or price. However, the Government will not make an award at a significantly higher overall price to achieve slightly superior non-price factors. Therefore, price is not expected to be the controlling factor in the selection of an offeror, but the degree of importance of price as a factor could become greater depending upon the equality of the proposal for other factors evaluated. When competing proposals are determined to be substantially equal after evaluation of all non-price factors, the price could become the controlling factor.

F. Responses to this SAPR will be evaluated against the following factors and subfactors:

Factor 1: Technical Approach

Subfactor 1.1: Staffing Plan Subfactor 1.2: Management Plan

Factor 2: Past Performance

Factor 3: Price

Evaluation Factor 1: Technical Approach

Under the Technical Factor, the Government will evaluate the extent to which the offeror’s proposal demonstrates a sound, practical approach for satisfying the requirements stated in the solicitation. The approaches, plans, processes, and team capabilities required to be demonstrated within these subfactors are equally important in order to achieve successful contract performance.

The Government will determine if the proposal meets or exceeds requirements, to what degree the proposed approach indicates an understanding of the requirements, and the level of risk to unsuccessful performance per the rating definitions contained within Table 1 below.

The Government will utilize the combined Technical/Risk rating methodology contained within Table 1 below, which includes consideration of risk in conjunction with the evaluation findings;

strengths, weaknesses and deficiencies of the offeror’s proposal when determining the Technical Factor rating. Evaluation of risk will assess the degree to which the offeror’s proposed approach for meeting the requirements outlined in this solicitation may cause disruption of schedule, increased costs, degradation of performance, the need for increased Government oversight, or the increased likelihood of unsuccessful contract performance. Risk is one aspect of the technical evaluation and contributes to determining the Factor level rating.

The Government will provide an overall rating for Factor 1: Technical Approach IAW table 1 below. Individual subfactors will not be given a rating, but instead will be evaluated for strengths, weaknesses and deficiencies.

Subfactor 1.1, Staffing Approach:

(i) The Offeror shall clearly detail their understanding and approach to recruit, hire, and retain qualified personnel who can execute the functional requirements as outlined in the

PWS.

(ii) Offeror must clearly detail their approach to ensure continuity of services during personnel absences due to sickness, leave, security violations, and voluntary or involuntary termination from employment to avoid disruption of services. The Offeror shall provide an overall staffing approach that will reduce turnover and maintain high quality services.

(iii) Offeror must provide a staffing matrix listing labor categories and descriptions, labor hours, and number of employees required to provide the effort. Provide a staffing plan with the proposed full-time equivalents (FTEs), mix of labor categories, personnel qualifications, and hours to enable the successful execution of all of the PWS requirements. Offeror shall map the mix of labor categories to the corresponding PWS paragraph(s)/sub-paragraphs, respectively, and describe the duties, responsibilities, personnel qualifications of each position.

The Workload Projections are provided in PWS Appendix A. These projections are the Government’s estimate ONLY and are NOT intended to be binding on either party or to be the ONLY possible solution to the requirements. It is not intended to influence the offeror’s proposed estimates, however, it is provided to assist the offeror in determining the general overall scope to support this task order. Should an offeror deviate from this projection, the offeror shall discuss in detail the rationale for the deviation. Cross training is NOT a viable solution for deviation.

Subfactor 1.2, Management Plan:

(i) Offeror shall provide a quality control plan (QCP) IAW PWS para 4.1 that will effectively eliminate government oversight and remediation for any interruption or degradation of service levels.

(ii) Offeror shall clearly describe an effective approach to accomplish a phase-in to meet requirements at contract start and include a logical timeline to ensure a smooth start of the contract tasks without interruption or degradation of service levels.

Table 1: Rating Methods for Evaluation Factor 1

RATING

DESCRIPTION

Good Proposal indicates a thorough approach and understanding of the requirements and contains at least one strength, and risk of unsuccessful performance is low.

Acceptable Proposal meets requirements and indicates an adequate approach and understanding of the requirements, and risk of unsuccessful performance is no worse than moderate.

Unacceptable Proposal has NOT demonstrated an adequate approach and understanding of the requirements, and/or risk of unsuccessful performance is high.

Evaluation Factor 2: Past Performance

The Government will evaluate the Offeror on its entire Past Performance history. In conducting the Past Performance evaluation, the Government reserves the right to use both the information provided in the offeror’s Past Performance proposal volume and information obtained from other sources available to the Government, to include, but not limited to, the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS), Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS), Electronic Subcontract Reporting System (eSRS), or other databases;

interviews with Program Managers, Contracting Officers and Fee Determining Officials; the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA), and commercial sources.

All Offerors are required to submit Past Performance and include the following:

Identify no less or more than three (3) of the most recent and relevant contracts performed within the last Five (5) years from the release date of this SAPR. Information shall include company and/or agency contact information, identifying contract information (i.e. contract #’s), addresses, and the nature of the contract performance. At least one (1) shall be from the Federal Government (includes U.S. Department of Defense). Relevancy is defined in Table 2.

Offeror shall submit the Contractor Performance Assessment Reports System (CPARS) for the referenced contracts/task orders listed in their proposal. CPARS reports do not count against the page limitations described in the proposal format and criteria section. If no CPARS is available, offerors shall submit completed customer questionnaires identifying the quality of performance for each reference. There is no specific template for the questionnaires, but they must be signed and include contact information for the customer representative. Questionnaires will not count against the page limitations described in the proposal format and criteria section.

If a teaming arrangement is contemplated, provide complete information as to the arrangement, including any relevant and recent past/present performance information on previous teaming arrangements with same partner. If this is a first-time joint effort, each party to the arrangement must provide a list of three (3) past and present relevant contracts. Page limitations for volume II are increased to nine (9) for first-time joint efforts.

Method of Evaluation

Recency Assessment: An assessment of the past performance information contained in the Offeror’s submittals will be made to determine if it is recent. To be recent, the effort must be ongoing or must have been performed within the past five (5) years from the release date of this solicitation. Any single reference that fails this condition may be deemed to be “Not Recent” and may result in an overall Past Performance rating lower than “Substantial Confidence”.

Relevancy Rating: The Government will use the following relevancy definitions/ratings when assessing relevant past performance (Table 2). To obtain a “Relevant” rating, offerors must describe in detail how closely the provided services performed under identified contracts relate to the Performance Work Statement. Failure to provide required detail will result in a rating less than “Relevant”. References evaluated as less than “Relevant” may result in an overall Performance Confidence Assessments Rating of less than Substantial Confidence.

Table 2: Relevancy Rating

RATING DESCRIPTION

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

(i.e., Reference describes experience in fulfilling same market segment and describes in detail how closely the provided services performed under identified contracts relate to the Performance Work Statement).

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

(i.e., Reference does not describe experience in fulfilling same market segment and/or provides no detail resembling how closely the provided services performed under those contracts relate to the Performance Work Statement).

Performance Quality Assessment: The Government will consider the performance quality of recent, relevant efforts. For each recent, relevant past performance reference reviewed, a performance quality rating (PQR) will be assigned by the performance raters in accordance with the Performance Quality Ratings (Table 3). More relevant and more recent past performance may weigh more heavily than less relevant less recent past performance.

Table 3: Performance Quality Rating

CODE PERFORMANCE LEVEL

Exceptional The Contractor’s performance meets contractual requirements and exceeds many (requirements) to the Government’s benefit. The contractual performance was accomplished with few minor problems for which corrective actions taken by the Contractor were highly effective.

Very Good The Contractor’s performance meets contractual requirements and exceeds some (requirements) to the Government’s benefit. The contractual performance was accomplished with some minor problems for which corrective actions taken by the Contractor were effective.

Satisfactory The contractor’s performance met contractual requirements. The contractual performance contained some minor problems for which corrective actions taken by the contractor appear or was resolved satisfactorily.

Marginal Performance did not meet some contractual requirements. The contractual performance reflected a serious problem for which the Contractor did not yet identify corrective actions or the Contractor’s proposed actions appeared marginally effective or were not fully implemented.

Unsatisfactory Performance does not meet most contractual requirements and recovery is not likely in a timely manner. The contractual performance contained serious problem(s) for which the Contractor’s corrective actions appeared, or were, ineffective.

N/A Unable to provide a performance level.

The Government will use the following definitions/ratings in Table 4 when making an overall Performance Confidence Assessment (PCA). Below are the definitions and evaluation process that the government will utilize:

Table 4: Performance Confidence Assessment Rating Method

ADJECTIVAL

RATING

DESCRIPTION

Substantial Confidence

Based on the offeror’s recent/relevant performance record, the Government has a high expectation that the offeror will successfully perform the required effort. Rating considered higher than Neutral.

Satisfactory Confidence

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

Neutral Confidence

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

Limited Confidence

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

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

Evaluation Factor 3: Price

Price Analysis will be conducted. Proposals will be evaluated for price reasonableness, balance, and completeness. In evaluating submitted price proposals, the Government will evaluate the offeror’s proposed Total Evaluated Price (TEP) for reasonableness. The TEP will be utilized for evaluation purposes only.

TEP: The Total Evaluated Price is the sum of all costs/prices proposed by the offeror for the base year, 4 out-year options, plus the 6-month extension.

Completeness: The proposal will be reviewed to determine the extent to which all the price elements have been addressed. The Offeror’s proposed price and other information will be evaluated to ensure continuity and traceability of prices to the technical volume and between the initial proposal and any revisions thereto. The review will determine the adequacy of the Offeror’s proposal in addressing and fulfilling the SAPR requirements.

Reasonableness: For a price to be reasonable, it must represent a price to the Government that a prudent person would pay in the conduct of competitive business. The Government will determine prices fair and reasonable through the use of one or more of the price analysis techniques at FAR 13.106-3(a).

Unbalanced pricing: Offerors are cautioned against submitting an offer that contains unbalanced pricing. Unbalanced pricing may increase performance risk and could result in payment of unreasonably high prices. Unbalanced pricing exists when, despite an acceptable total evaluated price, the price of one (1) or more contract line items is significantly over or understated. The Government shall analyze offers to determine whether they are unbalanced with respect to separately priced line items or sub-line items. An offer that is determined to be unbalanced may be rejected if the Contracting Officer determines that the lack of balance poses an unacceptable risk to the Government.