CO Signed Urgent and Compelling FAR 13.5 JOFOC.pdf

Justification for Other than Full and Open Competition

Unusual and Compelling Urgency

FAR 13.501

Date: October 31, 2022

Prepared by: Robert Singman

Purchase Request: NB150000-23-00160

Subject: NIST Safety Culture Survey

I. Contracting Activity.

National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) Office of Acquisition and Agreements Management Acquisition Management Division 100 Bureau Drive MS 1640 Gaithersburg MD, 20899

II. Nature and/or Description of the action being approved.

This action enabled the Office of Safety, Health and Environment (OSHE) to mobilize a contractor to conduct a survey of Federal employees’ perceptions of safety at NIST. This is in response a very serious workplace accident, which created an urgent need for a safety culture survey and associated recommendations to improve the safety culture. The NIST Director asked OSHE to deploy the safety culture survey as soon as possible.

The procedures in FAR subpart 13.501 were used for this acquisition, in accordance with 41

USC 1901.

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

A Serious Injury or Fatality (SIF) workplace incident occurred on September 26, 2022. This created an urgent need to understand employees’ perception of safety at NIST and to gather associated recommendations for improving NIST’s safety culture so that workplace incident of September 26, 2022, does not happen again.

Given time constraints, NIST needed a battery of survey questions that were readymade and reliable. OSHE had conducted its own safety culture surveys most recently in 2014 and 2017, and while survey takers’ anonymity was protected and the questions reflected a professionally developed battery of questions developed in 2011, current OSHE staff lacked the expertise to determine employees’ trust in an internally administered survey and the relevance of the survey questions. Additionally, OSHE staff would not be able to determine data quality or perform data cleaning, let alone benchmarking, of any results, and they did not know best practices for driving high survey-response rates.

The urgent need for accurate results and valid recommendations and action planning compelled NIST to engage a contractor with experience designing, administering, analyzing, and benchmarking a safety culture survey.

The total value of this requirement is $50,000.00.

IV. An identification of the statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition.

FAR 13.501 (a)

A demonstration that the proposed contractor’s unique qualifications or the nature of the acquisition requires use of the authority cited.

The procurement of the supplies/services described above by other than full and open competition is appropriate because there is only one qualified source.

Contractor:

National Safety Council 1121 Spring Lake Drive Itasca, IL 60143

DUNS 046573085

The National Safety Council (NSC) is the only contractor identified with the ability to benchmark NIST’s survey culture survey results against those of similar organizations and to meet the immediate need for survey deployment.

The NSC has conducted surveys for more than 1,500 establishments representing millions of employees. These results are aggregated in the NSC’s proprietary database, and so NIST’s survey data can be used for an internal assessment of safety culture and an external rating of performance against similar organizations. It is important for NIST to have context for its results, and benchmarking, enabled by the NSC’s database, provides that context.

V. A description of the efforts made to ensure that offers are solicited from as many potential sources as is practicable, including whether a notice was or will be publicized as required by Subpart 5.2 and, if not, which exception under 5.202 applies.

In accordance with FAR 6.302-2, the justification is posted within 30 days after contract award.

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

The price was determined to be fair and reasonable based on the OSHE provided scope of work.

This determination was made by the Contracting Officer in consultation with the OSHE safety officers.

VII. A description of the market research conducted (see part 10) and the results or statement of the reason market research was not conducted.

During market research conducted in October 2022, OSHE sought contractors who had a battery of preset, standardized survey questions and the ability to benchmark NIST’s results against similar organizations’ using those questions, and none but NSC were found.

OSHE had identified categories of questions to be included in the survey (management, supervisor, and employee engagement in safety and safety support activities and climate) but wanted preset survey questions because OSHE lacked the expertise to know what questions were important to ask within each of those categories and what best practices were for phrasing those questions. For example, unclear or compound questions prevent survey takers from answering accurately, as do questions phrased in positive- or negative-leaning ways. OSHE found some contractors with preset safety survey questions, but it was not clear how the questions were chosen and how they were phrased. And while all contractors’ safety survey questions could be edited to be NIST-specific, it could not be determined whether these contractors would work with OSHE to render the questions NIST-specific without compromising the quality of those questions. NSC’s preset questions were the only exception to these concerns; they reflect safety-program elements of NSC member companies, concepts from OSHA Voluntary Protection Programs, research on how management styles and value systems influence operations, and research into the perceived importance of safety management within organizations with excellent and poor safety experience.

Additionally, no contractor but NSC was identified who could use the survey results to benchmark NIST’s results against those of other, similar organizations. Benchmarking through NSC allows NIST to compare its survey results against those of more than 1,500 first-time survey client establishments that represent a cross section of industry (government agencies) and organizational size. NIST will receive both an internal assessment of safety/health programs and an external performance rating using the NSC database’s parameters. Combined, these data provide a comprehensive and contextual view of NIST’s safety culture and can be used to identify strengths and areas for improvement.

Finally, given the accelerated timeline for survey deployment established by the NIST Director, OSHE was unsuccessful in identifying other candidates who could deploy the survey within that timeline.

VIII. Any other facts supporting the use of other than full and open competition.

N/A

IX. A list of sources, if any, that expressed in writing, any interest in the acquisition.

N/A

X. A statement of the action, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers to competition before any subsequent acquisition for the supplies or services required.

After the safety survey of NIST Federal staff is completed, NIST and the acquisition office will develop requirements that will be advertised competitively to maximize competition to address a safety survey for all NIST employees (Federal, associates and contractor) who work on a NIST campus.

XI. Contracting officer certification that the justification is accurate and complete to the best of the contracting officer’s knowledge and belief.

Approved by:

Robert J. Singman Date Contracting Officer, NIST

10/31/2022