CAO-20-0455 FAR Part13-5-Sole-Source-JA_OpenFOAM_Redacted0827.pdf

Control No:

Contractor: CFD Direct Limited

Program/Equipment: OpenFOAM Technical Support

Version – March 2017 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

FAR Subpart 13.5 Simplified Procedures for Certain Commercial Items – Sole

Source Justification and Approval

1. Contracting Activity: Army Contracting Command - New Jersey

2. Description of Action: The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC) - Armaments Center (AC) requests approval of a firm-fixed price purchase order (PO) with options with CFD Direct Limited.

An acquisition plan is not required because this procurement does not meet the threshold at Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement 207.103(d)(i)(B).

3. Description of Supplies/Services:

OpenFOAM is a free, open source program that is distributed under the General Public License. It is widely used in academia and industry and shows consistent results with commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) programs. Due to its open source nature, the code is easily customizable and is currently used by various engineers and scientists in the US Army with no annual fees or license requirements.

The contractor shall provide technical support to CCDC-AC in the development of a multiphase, multidimensional CFD solver for interior ballistics applications using the OpenFOAM architecture. The contractor will also provide guidance for the numerical simulation of multiphase flow systems. The contractor support shall be provided to the needs of the CCDC-AC engineers’ schedule and project schedule. The support shall include teleconference time, correspondence, solver modifications, tutorials, briefing preparation/support, software compilation, and input/output analysis requested by engineers at CCDC-AC. Any adjustments or changes of the above must be approved by the United States Government.

Period of Performance: Twelve month base period with four additional option years

4. Authority Cited: Simplified Procedures for Certain Commercial Items, 41 U.S.C. 1901 as implemented by FAR Subpart 13.5: Brand-Name

5. Reason for Authority Cited:

The CCDC-AC mission requirement is to develop a custom interior ballistics model using the OpenFOAM framework. OpenFOAM is distributed exclusively under the General Public License, which gives users the freedom to modify and redistribute the software and a guarantee of continued free use. OpenFOAM is widely used in academia and industry, and has many built-in features that allow it to be as robust as commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes that require expensive annual licenses.

Since OpenFOAM is maintained and managed by CFD Direct, new releases and features of the program can be easily included in any given computational fluid dynamics solver with each subsequent release. As noted, CFD Direct contributes approximately of new code to the OpenFOAM code base and thus the company has multitudes of experience with developing various computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solvers, including multiphase flow. By collaborating with CFD Direct, a solver can be readily developed and maintained between subsequent releases of the OpenFOAM program.

Army specific correlations regarding empirical test data can then be incorporated into the solver without knowledge transfer to CFD Direct as these correlations would be entered via input to a given simulation. This would allow the solver itself to be completely unclassified and non-proprietary and thus, allowing CFD Direct to continually support the solver with future releases of the OpenFOAM program.

Furthermore, CCDC-AC’s development of such a model is a necessity

Additionally, by collaborating with CFD Direct, the cognizant engineer will become more familiar with writing numerical solvers in the OpenFOAM framework. Thus, additional continuum mechanics models can be developed to support modeling multitudes of engineering problems (e.g., structural analysis, heat transfer, etc.).

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Effective competition is not anticipated for this requirement. The Contracting Officer shall publish the notices required by FAR 5.201.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: CFD Direct Limited is the only source that can provide the expertise and level of technical support required by CCDC-AC.

Market Research will be refreshed as necessary to determine if there have been any changes allowing for competition should the Government require additional OpenFOAM technical support.

Prior to future acquisitions for the same or similar equipment, brand name or otherwise, the Government will reassess its machining equipment on-hand to determine if the same circumstances supported in this justification exist in terms of OpenFOAM technical support capabilities and the corresponding cost and schedule savings.

8. Market Research:

CCDC-AC ballisticians and technical points of contact (POCs) queried Government database, General Services Administration (GSA) from 13-20 March 2020 under 54151S (2 vendors) and 70:13251 (5 vendors). The POCs also conducted discussions with subject matter experts, Google searches, and email inquiries with industry for further information.

Sources Sought Notice, W15QKN-20-X-0BKQ, was posted on Systems Award for Management (SAM) May 13, 2020 – Jun 03, 2020 and CFD Direct Limited was the only source deemed technically acceptable and capable for this effort. CFD Direct Limited fulfills all requirements and is known to be a reliable manufacturer. The other sources identified:

are either providers of unrelated solutions (IT services, business strategy, finance, healthcare, or cyber security) or are unable to fulfill one or more necessary functions that are needed to fulfill mission requirements such as the ability to develop customer multiphase flow solvers.

9. Interested Sources: To date, no other sources have written to express interest in the acquisition.

10. Other Facts: N/A

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.

Typed Name:

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.

13. Fair and Reasonable Cost Determination: I hereby determine that the anticipated cost or price to the Government for this contract action will be fair and reasonable.

As a part of this basis, certified cost or pricing data is not required because the item and/or services being acquired are considered commercial.

14. Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

APPROVAL

Based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the procurement of OpenFOAM Technical Support for a total value of on a sole source basis pursuant to the authority of the Simplified Procedures for Certain Commercial Items, 41 United States Code (U.S.C. 1901) as implemented by FAR Subpart 13.5, subject to availability of funds, and provided that the services or supplies herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.