Combined Synopsis and Solicitation - 16PBGC25R0056.pdf

Commercial Solicitation FAR Part 13 in Conjunction with FAR Part 12 Solicitation #: 16PBGC25R0056

Combined Synopsis & Solicitation for Commercial Products or Commercial Services

This is a combined synopsis/solicitation for commercial products or commercial services prepared in accordance with the format in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) subpart 12.6, as supplemented with additional information included in this notice. This announcement constitutes the only solicitation; proposals are being requested and a written solicitation will not be issued.

This is a request for proposal. The solicitation number is 16PBGC25R0056. The solicitation document and incorporated provisions and clauses are those in effect through Federal

Acquisition Circular 2025-03.

The applicable NAICS code is 541511 with a size standard of $34 million. This solicitation is issued as a small business set-aside. All qualified small businesses may respond.

The price schedule, description of work, period of performance, instructions, evaluation criteria, clauses, provisions, and due date are contained in the documents attached to this announcement.

Contents Section 1: SUPPLIES OR SERVICES AND PRICES/COSTS

Section 2: PERFORMANCE WORK STATEMENT

1. INTRODUCTION

2. BACKGROUND

3. SCOPE OF WORK & REQUIREMENTS

3.1 Actuarial Services, Actuarial Expertise, Actuarial Studies and PIMS Related Projects

3.2 Operations and Maintenance (O&M) to the Legacy PIMS Models

3.3 System Modifications to Legacy PIMS

3.4 Project Management - Planning, Scheduling, Tracking, Managing, Reporting

4. SCHEDULE OF DELIVERABLES

5. PERFORMANCE REQUIREMENT SUMMARY

6. PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE

7. HOURS OF OPERATION

8. PLACE OF PERFORMANCE

Section 3: INSTRUCTIONS TO VENDORS

Section 4: EVALUATION FACTORS FOR AWARD

Section 1: SUPPLIES OR SERVICES AND PRICES/COSTS

1.1 Introduction

The Government intends to award a firm-fixed priced (FFP) standalone C-type contract in accordance with the procedures of FAR parts 12 and 13.

The Contractor shall provide the required services, as defined in Section 2, of this Request for Proposal (RFP). The associated North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code is 541511. See Attachment 2 - Legacy PIMS Task Map & Labor Projections referenced in the performance work statement (PWS) for a list of tasks related to pricing.

1.2 Pricing Schedule

Legacy PIMS Actuarial & IT Support Services Base Year: September 1, 2025 – August 31, 2026

CLIN Description Qty Unit Unit Price Total Price

0001 Operations & Maintenance Legacy ME-PIMS Models 12 Months

0002 Operations & Maintenance Legacy SE-PIMS Models 12 Months

0003 Projections Report Modeling Legacy ME-PIMS Model 12 Months

0004 ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

Projections Report Modeling Legacy SE-PIMS Model 12 Months

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

ME & SE Special Project Requests 1 EA

Optional

ME & SE Special Project Requests 1 EA

Total Price

See continued pricing schedule below

Option Year 1: September 1, 2026 – August 31, 2027

CLIN Description Qty Unit Unit Price Total Price Optional

Operations & Maintenance Legacy ME-PIMS Models 12 Months

Optional

Projections Report Modeling Legacy ME-PIMS Model 12 Months

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

Operations & Maintenance Legacy SE-PIMS Models 12 Months

Optional

Projections Report Modeling Legacy SE-PIMS Model 12 Months

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

ME & SE Special Project Requests 1 EA

Optional

See continued pricing schedule below

Option Year 2: September 1, 2027 – August 31, 2028

CLIN Description Qty Unit Unit Price Total Price Optional

Operations & Maintenance Legacy ME-PIMS Models 12 Months

Optional

Projections Report Modeling Legacy ME-PIMS Model 12 Months

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

Operations & Maintenance Legacy SE-PIMS Models 12 Months

Optional

Projections Report Modeling Legacy SE-PIMS Model 12 Months

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

ME & SE Technical Assistance Requests 3 EA

Optional

ME & SE Special Project Requests 1 EA

Optional

Section 2: PERFORMANCE WORK STATEMENT LEGACY PIMS ACTUARIAL and IT SUPPORT SERVICES

1. INTRODUCTION

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) was established to develop and administer the pension plan insurance programs as provided in Title IV of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974. PBGC’s primary mission is to encourage the continuation and maintenance of voluntary private pension plans for the benefit of their participants, provide for the timely and uninterrupted payment of pension benefits to participants and beneficiaries under plans to which Title IV applies, and maintain PBGC insurance premiums at the lowest level consistent with carrying out its obligations under Title IV.

ERISA established two insurance programs to be administered by PBGC. The single-employer (SE) program covers plans maintained by one employer, or by a group of employers, but not pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement. The multiemployer (ME) program covers plans that are collectively bargained and cover the employees of two or more unrelated employers. Each insurance program is operated and financed separately from the other, and assets from one cannot be used to support the other.

2. BACKGROUND

The Pension Insurance Modeling System (PIMS) is a tool developed by the Policy, Research and Analysis Department (PRAD) to model the SE and ME pension plan universes. A key purpose of PIMS is to enable PBGC to produce its annual Projections Report in order to satisfy its statutory obligation under ERISA 4008 to produce an “actuarial evaluation of the expected operations and status of [PBGC’s] funds” each year. The current SE PIMS and ME PIMS models in conjunction are referred to as Legacy PIMS. A newer PIMS model (“T-PIMS”) has recently been deployed into Production but is not currently being utilized as the PIMS System of Record. The scope of work for this contract only applies to the current Legacy PIMS. This scope of work also includes decommissioning of the Legacy SE PIMS during this contract’s overall Period of Performance.

Single-Employer (SE) PIMS The single-employer program is the largest of the two programs, insuring about 19.4 million workers and retirees covered by about 23,000 plans as of September 30, 2024. SE PIMS is a stochastic (i.e., random) simulation model that PBGC uses to evaluate its exposure and likelihood of future claims and to quantify the amount of risk facing the single-employer insurance program. SE PIMS portrays PBGC's future financial condition as a function of a variety of economic parameters. SE PIMS has over 60,000 lines of computer code written in the C++ programming language as well as a user-interface and post-processing that is written in c#. SE PIMS is the most complex system of Legacy PIMS. Additional information about SE PIMS can be found in Attachment 1 – Legacy PIMS Fact Sheet.

Multiemployer (ME) PIMS ME PIMS is a stochastic (i.e., random) simulation model that PBGC uses to evaluate its exposure and likelihood of future claims and to quantify the amount of risk facing the multiemployer insurance

Program. It is also used to satisfy PBGC's statutory requirement under Section 4022 of ERISA to conduct quinquennial studies of the multiemployer insurance program to determine the adequacy of multiemployer premium rates and benefit guarantees.

ME PIMS was developed by PRAD during 2018 for versatility flexibility. This model is developed in Excel.

The calculations are completed in Excel-based formulas, with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) components to improve efficiency and reduce run-time. ME PIMS was designed to allow users to easily make changes to the model and to adapt to the Technical Assistance requests received from Capitol Hill.

ME PIMS relies on data from the Form 5500 database, primarily from the Schedules MB and H/I.

Projected benefit payment cash flows for plans are developed in part using other supporting spreadsheets that calibrate to the Current Liabilities and Current Liability Normal Cost with sample census distributions. Additional information about ME PIMS can be found in Attachment 1 – Legacy PIMS Fact Sheet.

PIMS Operations The contractor shall support PIMS through the architecture for the production environment. The SE PIMS production environment is comprised of 11 cloud servers under Microsoft Azure, running on Windows Server 2022 Datacenter. While one of the server acts as APPS server, other 10 servers are used as drones. These are connected to an MS SQL Server and exposed to the user through their individual Windows 11 Desktop. The Development and QA environments are comprised of 53 cloud servers under MS Azure, running on Windows Server 2022 Datacenter, with a MS SQL server on the back end. This drone farm is exposed to the user via Windows 11 VDI desktops. From a user desktop within PRAD, the user can perform the following tasks:

1. View/edit data

2. Submit jobs

3. Review progress of jobs

4. View/Print results

5. Compare job results/settings

6. Execute post-processing using SAS, a statistical analysis tool used by PRAD staff as a supporting tool and found outside the PIMS boundaries

Once a user opens the PIMS manager and submits a job, PIMS will update the queue database with a job request. The PIMS Agent service, which uses a service account and password, then polls all the pending jobs in the queue and assigns them to different CPUs. From there, the assigned drone server calls an execution file to calculate the job. The database servers upload the dataset at the beginning of the job to send back to the drone server. From there, calculations done within PIMS produces output files and stores them in job-specific output directories. These output directories are in the application/file server.

Most of the code is written in C++. The codebase itself contains active code as well as old code that, while is no longer in use, remains in the code base. SAS is used by PRAD as a statistical tool. For some SAS programs, the output is automatically converted into excel for additional graphs and reports for the end user.

3. SCOPE OF WORK & REQUIREMENTS

The Contractor shall manage and provide support in all areas below. Specifically, individual model and system change requests under PWS Sections 3.1 and 3.3 will be tracked and completed using a ticketing system. To track the progress under 3.4, PRAD will initiate requests and the contractor will create a ticket. For O&M work under 3.2, production tickets will be submitted via Service Now, and technical changes will be submitted into DevOps as a user story and tracked to completion. Each specific ticket will be classified to the applicable performance area (i.e. Operations and Maintenance, Projections Report, Technical Assistance, or Special Project). The contractor will process and close out tickets under an initially agreed-upon timeframe with PRAD based on the scope, anticipated level of effort and testing, and risk of each individual ticket.

Operations and Maintenance (O&M) for the Legacy PIMS Models The Contractor shall perform tasks associated with the operation and maintenance of the system in the test and production environments for both the Legacy SE PIMS and ME PIMS. The requirements for the Operations and Maintenance of the Legacy SE-PIMS model are more significant than that of the Legacy ME-PIMS model. This includes, but is not limited to, providing support to users, performing system backups, performing system issue triage and fixes using patch and defect management methods, software maintenance, and disposal of system. On-call support shall be required to resolve critical and urgent system issues determined by the agency. The Legacy SE PIMS system is also required to be decommissioned after the new official agency System of Record becomes operational. The decommissioning activities of the Legacy SE PIMS system are incorporated into this requirement.

The ME-PIMS model is built within Microsoft Excel files and therefore does not utilize separate dedicated system environments (e.g. Development, Test, Production). As a result, the requirements for the Operations and Maintenance of the ME-PIMS model are highly simplified and consist of user support related to troubleshooting issues and bugs within the ME-PIMS Excel files.

Projections Report Modeling The Contractor shall support SE Legacy PIMS and/or ME-PIMS to include writing code to make updates to the model or system, including adjustments to reflect new pension rules and regulations, for purposes of producing PBGC’s Annual Projections Report1. This includes the required programming setup and support for the models used to produce the results published in the report. The final production of the report and the development of the data and assumptions used in the model runs which support the report’s findings are not included within the scope of this contract.

Technical Assistance (TA) Requests The Contractor shall provide PIMS modeling support and other ad hoc analytical support, as necessary, to address the requirements of a request to PBGC for Technical Assistance from Congress, another Federal Agency, or an external organization. A single Technical Assistance request to PBGC may require the Contractor to complete multiple new programming requirements and/or produce multiple PIMS runs in order to develop a response. Fulfillment of a single Technical Assistance request requires the Contractor to provide all the modeling and analysis necessary to enable PBGC to fully respond to the entire request made to PBGC, with the exception of any tasks for which there are data and/or tools necessary to complete the request that are not made available to the Contractor (e.g. sensitive data;

1 Copies of historical PBGC Projections Reports can be found here: https://www.pbgc.gov/about/projections-report https://www.pbgc.gov/about/projections-report another PBGC department’s system). The Contractor shall perform all required quality reviews and documentation included in PWS Sections 3.3 and 3.4.

Special Project (SP) Requests The Contractor shall conduct analysis on PRAD research projects, analysis of PRAD assumptions, or other special projects as requested by PBGC management. These projects are independent from requests for Technical Assistance and are longer-term in nature. An example includes a project to perform the data and actuarial analysis to complete an experience study for a PIMS assumption. The Contractor shall perform all required quality reviews and documentation included in PWS Sections 3.3 and 3.4.

Requirements The contractor shall ensure compliance with all applicable federal regulations, PBGC policies, processes, and procedures along with all directives and clauses in the performance of this contract. The requirements hereunder will be directed to the contractor as work assignment(s). Each assignment is categorized by type which then incorporates tasks related to O&M, projections modeling, TA, and SP requests. Additional information about the tasks specifically related to these requirement types can be found in Attachment 2 – Legacy PIMS Task Map and Labor Projections.

3.1 Actuarial Services, Actuarial Expertise, Actuarial Studies and PIMS Related Projects The Contractor shall provide support for actuarial services, expertise, studies and other Legacy PIMS related projects. Services may include but are not limited to:

1) Annual actuarial evaluations of PBGC's expected operations and financial status required under Section 4008 of ERISA. This includes all PIMS related modeling support required to develop PBGC’s annual Projections Report, as well as performing the “transcription process” to document all numbers published in the Projections Report to the underlying source (including but not limited to PIMS output).

2) Analyses of legislative, regulatory, and/or policy proposals to determine the impact on PBGC's financial position, projected PBGC cash flows, and/or the impact to the universe of plans insured by PBGC. This includes all PIMS-related modeling support.

3) Other ad hoc analysis to support PRAD research projects, analysis of PRAD assumptions, or other special projects as requested by PBGC management. This may include PIMS-related modeling support or other ad hoc analytical analysis.

4) Develop Scope statements for system change requirements to support the production of the annual Projections Report.

3.2 Operations and Maintenance (O&M) to the Legacy PIMS Models In order to maintain the PIMS application in production and provide user support, the Contractor shall do the following to meet the customer's needs, organization's goals, and objectives.

1) Contact users and provide technical support to ensure issues are resolved timely. Effectively communicate with the users to provide the status of the open issues.

2) Conduct analysis of problems reported by users and recommend functional and/or technical improvements, including the addition of business and technical features to existing software. Provide alternative solutions to improve the related processes and assist in exploring possibilities of using new features, functions, and modules

3) Participate in root cause analysis in order to resolve production and user support issues effectively.

4) Effectively respond to questions about the system outages and errors. Resolve technical issues with Information Technology Infrastructure Operations Department (ITIOD), production SQL Database Administrators (DBAs), network support, other PBGC teams, and other systems.

5) Provide support to ITIOD to resolve application production issues.

6) Support system administration duties as needed.

7) Support application and system audits from external and internal auditors.

8) Participate in corporate-wide IT initiatives such as System Security Plan (SSP) updates and assist with PIMS System Assessment and Accreditation (SA&A) process leading to the attainment of an Authority to Operate for ME PIMS and SE PIMS.

9) Provide technical support to PBGC as needed. Examples include, but are not limited to, testing and migration of applications to future versions of software, database and operating systems on servers.

10) Retire applications. The Contractor may propose processes, and methods for retiring and archiving applications, as long as they do not conflict with the current PBGC guidelines for decommissioning systems and are approved by the COR and ITIOD.

11) Plan and participate in Disaster Recovery (DR) testing for the PIMS applications; develop DR testing scenarios; work with users and DR team to execute DR tests and document results if requested.

12) Support activities for transitioning applications from/to other teams.

13) Support other PBGC teams responding to questions related to PIMS and/or related applications.

14) Provide other production support as needed, such as troubleshooting, debugging, identifying problems/errors, making corrections and improving efficiencies of PIMS and implementing changes in laws, policies and regulations as they occur.

15) Ensure compliance with the PBGC infrastructure changes and ITIOD roadmap and infrastructure requirements.

16) Support the IT and Business Program Managers in conducting the annual operational analysis.

17) Decommissioning: Upon request of the COR, the contractor shall take all steps required to decommission the system and/or components. This includes archiving code and documentation, coordinating removal/uninstall of code and components from all IT environments and ensuring data back-up and archiving as well as working with PIMS Transformation Contractor related to any data migration for the transition to the new PIMS system.

18) Support for:

I. Giving ongoing expert advice in the operations and capabilities to users on all areas of the PIMS and related systems

II. Maintaining a "problem log" of reported PIMS problems. The "problem log" is an up-to-date list of PIMS system problems which have been reported to the Contractor either by application users or by the Contractor's own personnel.

III. Determining the scope and level of effort of proposed modification or corrections to the existing

PIMS system.

IV. Making corrections to the PIMS system as requested and approved by the Subject Matter Expert (SME) and the COR according to an agreed upon schedule.

V. Providing corrections to documentation according to an agreed upon schedule.

VI. Providing subject matter expertise in the current workings of PIMS and current PIMS technology to IT groups and PIMS Transformation team including working with PIMS transformation contractor.

3.3 System Modifications to Legacy PIMS

Changes are generally requested to improve software in response to PBGC business processes, user interface, technology advancements or changes, and industry mandates. To support the system modification efforts, the Contractor shall:

1) Perform and complete project initiation, planning, research, analysis, design, development, and testing and implement any approved system modification and requirements to the existing application in compliance with the IT processes including Information Security Risk Management Framework and Information Technology Solutions Life Cycle Management (ITSLCM) Framework

2) Schedule and coordinate the releases with the integrated project/program team and deliver the releases on time.

3) Deploy high quality software releases in production and minimize downtime in production due to quality issues.

4) Leading the effort to analyze, prioritize and conduct meetings to determine system modifications.

5) Ensure the design is interoperable with other integrated systems and meets Enterprise Architecture (EA) guidelines and other PBGC standards.

6) Coordinate extensively with all stakeholders such as OIT, PRAD, Security and Privacy teams, and other applicable divisions and systems within PBGC and the Federal Government.

7) Deploy all software system modifications through releases according to established PBGC Software Configuration Management Procedures and Change and Release Management Policy, Processes and Procedures and PBGC security policies to ensure the agency standards are accurately captured and incorporated into the releases.

8) Conduct appropriate system level tests (e.g., unit testing, parallel testing, regression testing, integration testing, performance testing, load testing, functionality testing) to modify the quality of software releases. The Contractor may use automated testing tools.

9) Support and assist application users in User Acceptance Testing (UAT) of the application, including, but not limited to, (1) the preparation of test plans, test cases/scripts and test results, (2) the use of automated testing tools, and (3) the development and maintenance of operation system documentation and procedures.

10) Effectively coordinate the notification of the deployment of releases to users, stakeholders, Service Desk, COR, and other impacted parties in a timely manner to provide impacted parties time to prepare for the release.

11) Providing system modifications that include the design, programming, testing and implementation of major upgrades or significant new modeling capabilities based on user requirements developed by

PRAD.

12) Propose system modifications and corrections for both Models

13) Implement system modifications or corrections to both Models as approved by PRAD management and in accordance with an agreed upon implementation schedule.

14) Produce a System Change Request (SCR) document summarizing the following:

o A detailed description of the requirements for the enhancements o Dates documenting the following

Date of request Date of completion of development Date of completion of review o Documentation of who completed the enhancement and who reviewed it o Summary of the end-to-end testing conducted o Limitations of the enhancement o Quantitative summary of changes in the results of the model from the previous version.

This includes commentary about any notable differences and reasonability checks are conducted.

o Other important commentary about the enhancement, testing, and analysis o Other documentation about the enhancement, as requested by PBGC

15) Provide on-call support as needed during periods of Technical Assistance requests.

3.4 Project Management - Planning, Scheduling, Tracking, Managing, Reporting The contractor shall work directly with the COR, BISD Project and Program Managers, PRAD Project and Program Managers and PRAD customers to proactively plan and manage all work performed under this contract. The contractor shall:

1) Conduct scope management to ensure project scope is baselined and changes to scope are managed through the project lifecycle. This includes the initial and preliminary “Scope Statements” to include requirements for system and model changes to support annual Projections Reports. Establish and follow procedures for release management and change control, including an impact assessment.

2) Follow the Change Management Process outlined in Attachment 3 – Team Workflow and Separation of Duties Chart. This process and any changes required to be implemented during the performance period shall be implemented by the contractor at the discretion of the agency.

3) Conduct schedule management to include establishing a resource-loaded and baselined schedule in PBGC’s approved project management system (currently Microsoft Project Online, a.k.a. P3M)

4) Develop project schedules and project baselines for identified projects to include releases or any activity where resources are deployed to make changes to or support applications in this Task Order.

Follow the ITSLCM framework in developing the schedule and ensure the schedule includes the deliverables, milestones, planned durations for each task, project start and end dates, resources, work breakdown structure of activities, and other specific information needed to track the projects.

The Contractor will work with the subject matter experts and other stakeholders in eliciting requirements.

5) Maintain relationships and partnerships with all integrated system leadership for systems both internal and external to the project IT applications/systems.

6) Prepare project status reports as defined by the Federal IT Project Manager along with understanding agency priorities and aligning their team’s actions to meet changing priorities.

3.4.1 Project Management - Issue and Risk Management

PBGC places great importance on actively performing risk management by identifying, developing and using mitigation strategies while also effectively escalating risks as a key component of project management. The Contractor shall:

1) Include risk management strategies, based on PBGC Risk Management Policy. Additional information can be found in Attachment 4 - IT Risk Management Strategy and Process.

2) Identify and track risks that may impact the project and PBGC systems and identify mitigation strategies in BISD’s system of record (currently P3M).

3) Identify and track issues and work to resolve and ensure system operations and releases remain on-schedule.

3.4.2 Project Management - Status Reporting

Regular and ad hoc reporting is required to ensure all PBGC project stakeholders are aware of project and system status. Tools shall be kept up to date to enable status reporting and status views at any time by the PBGC team. The Contractor shall provide regular status and ad hoc reporting to the COR, IPT, and executive sponsors for all contractor activities.

3.4.3 Project Management - Integrated Project Team (IPT)

PBGC uses integrated project teams (IPTs) to provide governance and guidance for IT systems and projects. These IPTs consist of members from various PBGC stakeholder groups including the Information System Owner, Information System Security Manager, IT Infrastructure, Enterprise Architecture, system operations and development team, IT project manager and many others. All system operations and changes shall be guided by an IPT.

The contractor shall:

1) Coordinate and facilitate IPT governance bodies to enable decisions on system changes and to provide a venue for dissemination of system information.

2) Provide status on system operations and changes.

3.4.4 Project Management - Meeting Participation

Throughout the management and support of PBGC systems and projects, meetings will be conducted to gather information, make decisions, disseminate information, etc. Conducting efficient meetings and maintaining accurate minutes of those meetings is essential to the success of PBGC projects. The Contractor shall:

1) Develop agendas and circulate those agendas ahead of any meetings organized by the contractor.

2) Develop meeting materials when the contractor is presenting.

3) Facilitate meetings that allow for in-person and/or remote participation via teleconference, Skype and/or other remote participation tools.

4) Record and provide minutes of all meetings conducted or attended as part of this contract work and deliver those minutes for participant review and comment.

5) Participate in meetings as required for other PBGC efforts that may impact or be impacted by this contract.

3.4.5 Project Management - System Documentation and Documentation Maintenance PBGC system documentation includes any documentation generated as part of a maintenance or system modification effort, technical documentation, models, operational manuals, meeting agendas/minutes and any documentation used or created as part of the performance of PBGC system support. All documentation shall be maintained and kept current during the maintenance period by the Contractor using PBGC’s SharePoint sites or a PBGC approved tool.

Updated documents must be reviewed and approved by BISD COR in coordination with BISD Project and Program Managers, and PRAD's Program Manager and SMEs. Upon request by the COR, the Contractor shall provide training to users on PIMS and/or related systems.

The Contractor shall:

1) Develop or update PBGC documentation, including manuals (e.g., operations, system administration, system maintenance, user and training) and plans (e.g. system integration and site implementation). Documentation shall follow the latest approved standards at the time of the execution effort and delivery of the system. The Contractor shall develop documentation and/or update existing IT Solutions Life Cycle Management (ITSLCM) documents that are required as a result. Additional information about the ITSLCM can be found in Attachment 5 – ITSLCM Framework.

2) Comply with PBGC standards and guidelines for all documentation, update all system documents when changes occur in the application or process, and maintain and revise PBGC system and business process documentation in accordance with the processes determined by the agency.

3.4.6 Project Management - Transition Support

The objective of transition support is to ensure continuity of services in the areas supported by the incumbent while the incoming contractor learns how to support these services. The Contractor shall support transition from the outgoing incumbent, as well as transition to PBGC or a new contractor, if required.

Transition In - Upon award, the Contractor shall begin an effective transition of work from the incumbent. The contractor shall assume full responsibility for an orderly phase-in of operations that minimize the impact to PBGC. The contractor shall ensure that transition activities are transparent to the current operations and do not disrupt or adversely affect the current day to day operations. The transition in period shall not exceed 60 days after contract award. The plan should address all work to be assumed from the incumbent and the tasks required to accomplish successfully taking on the scope of work including onboarding, technical access, transfer of documentation, transfer of all knowledge and any other activities required.

Transition Out - The Contractor shall accommodate transition for at least two (2) months of its functions to PBGC or a new contractor upon re-compete of this contract. The Contractor shall deliver all documentation, information for the operation and maintenance of the PBGC systems, and provide communications, training, and support to PBGC to ensure a successful transition of PBGC to another vendor. The Contractor shall develop a Transition Strategy detailing the steps necessary to transition operations and maintenance to PBGC, another PBGC selected vendor and any active documentation or activities for releases. At completion of the contract, all licenses revert to PBGC. All documentation shall be maintained and kept current during the transition period by the Contractor.

4. SCHEDULE OF DELIVERABLES

The table below includes all deliverables required to fulfill the requirements outlined in section 3 above.

Specifically, the required timing of all model and system changes under requirements section 3.1 and 3.3 in order to support PRAD in the timely completion of the annual PBGC Projections Report as well as ad hoc modeling requests such as requests for Technical Assistance from external stakeholder. In addition, individual model and system change requests will be tracked and completed using a ticketing system.

PRAD will initiate requests and the contractor will create a ticket to track the progress under requirements section 3.4. The contractor will process and close out tickets under an initially agreed-upon timeframe with PRAD based on the scope, anticipated level of effort and testing, and risk of each individual ticket.

Task # Section(s) Deliverable Description Deadline

1 3.1, 3.3, 3.4

Draft or revise the initial “Scope Statement” to include the requirements for system and model changes to support the annual Projections Report completed during the current performance year.

Within first 30 calendar days of the beginning of each performance year

2 3.1, 3.3, 3.4 Provide a Detailed Project Schedule to complete all requirements of the initial Scope Statement by January 31st.

Due 15 days after requirements are approved

3 3.1, 3.3, 3.4

Begin the preliminary implementation of all requirements included in the initial Scope

Statement. Implementation includes delivery of all requirements in the Scope Statement, and all applicable System Change Request documentation.

Due by January 31st of each calendar year

4 3.1, 3.3

Finalize all system and model changes and complete PIMS-related set-up and support, to include applicable PIMS sub-processes, to enable PRAD to produce all PIMS runs required to produce the annual Projections Report. This includes any critical requirements identified after the initial Scope Statement was developed.

This includes all applicable System Change Request (SCR) documentation.

Due by April 15th of each calendar year, or later as directed by the

COR

5 3.1, 3.3, 3.4

Draft a preliminary Scope Statement to include requirements for system and model changes to support the Annual Projections Report completed during the next performance year.

Due by April 15th of each calendar year

Task # Section(s) Deliverable Description Deadline

6 3.1, 3.3, 3.4 Provide a detailed Project Schedule to complete next year’s preliminary Scope Statement by the end of the current performance year.

Due by April 30th of each calendar year

7 3.1, 3.3 Provide a final, approved version of the system and model to be used for the annual Projections Report into Production.

Due by May 31st of each calendar year, or later as directed by the

COR

8 3.1

Complete the “transcription process” to document all numbers published in the

Projections Report to the underlying source (including but not limited to PIMS output).

TBD based on Projections Report timing, with target date of June

30th of each calendar year

9 3.1, 3.3

Complete all system and model changes included in the April 30th Project Schedule and preliminary

Scope Statement. This includes all applicable System Change Request documentation.

Due by the end of the performance year

10 3.2 Problem log and document all known system issues and provide a plan to resolve them.

End of each Month

11 3.4.1, 3.4.2

Prepare and Submit a Monthly Program Management Report (PMR) deck which includes at a minimum an outage, staffing, release schedule, risk register, system issues, and compliance to new or changing IT requirements.

As required by the COR

12 3.4.2 Provide monthly Status Reports to include deliverable status, milestones, planned activities, completed activities.

Monthly

13 3.4.2, 3.4.3 Provide ad hoc reporting to COR, IPT, executive sponsors for all contractor activities.

Monthly

14 3.4.4 Provide meeting agendas and meeting minutes as directed by the COR.

As required by the COR

15 3.4.5

Develop and update PBGC documentation in accordance with the latest approved standards by following the IT Life Cycle Solutions Management

Framework (ITLCSM) as determined by the IT Project Manager/COR and in accordance with all

PBGC clauses.

As required for releases

16 3.2 Develop and execute a Legacy SE PIMS

Decommission Plan as directed by the COR.

As required by the COR

Task # Section(s) Deliverable Description Deadline

17 3.4.6

Develop and implement a “Transition in Plan” to ensure a seamless transition between contractor personal if necessary as determined by the agency.

Required 30 days after award

18 3.4.6

Develop and implement a “Transition out Plan” to ensure a seamless transition between contractor personal if necessary as determined by the agency.

Required 30 days prior to the end of the final performance period

5. PERFORMANCE REQUIREMENT SUMMARY

The government shall evaluate the contractor's performance under this contract in accordance with the quality standards defined in the Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan below. The Contractor shall maintain the quality assurance plan (QASP) to ensure performance in accordance with the performance standards awarded under this contract.

Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan Item

Performance

Standard Required Performance Acceptable Quality Level (AQL)

Surveillance Method Used

1 Timeliness All deliverables will be provided by the deadline referenced in Section 3.

All deliverables will be provided by their deadline unless revised by the COR

Email monitoring of receipt date. 100% COR inspection/ acceptance of each final deliverable

2 Quality

All Scope statements include the requirements for system and model changes to support the Annual Projections Report

No more than 2 revisions requested by the

COR

Email monitoring of receipt date. 100% COR inspection/ acceptance of each final deliverable

3 Quality

Provide a Project Schedule that incorporates the timeline/milestones to complete all the requirements of the initial Scope statement

No more than 2 revisions requested by the

COR

Email monitoring of receipt date. 100% COR inspection/ acceptance of each final deliverable

Quality, Timeliness, & Accuracy

All system and model changes are completed by the deadline outlined in section 3 and produce the outcomes required to build the Annual Projections Report

All system issues and model changes resolved after 1 request by the COR

Email monitoring of receipt date. 100% COR inspection/ acceptance of each final deliverable

Item

Performance Standard Required Performance Acceptable Quality

Level (AQL) Surveillance

Method Used

5 Accuracy

All Required documents are in accordance with ITSLCM (e.g., meeting agendas/materials/minutes, PMR, project and system documentation).

100% of required documents meet ITSLCM standards

Email monitoring of receipt date. 100% COR inspection/ acceptance of each final deliverable

6 Timeliness

Provide a response to On-Call Support within 2 hours of initial request by the agency and resolve or escalate issue within 2 hours of initial request

No more than 2 delayed on-call responses per contract year.

Email monitoring of receipt date. 100% COR inspection/ acceptance of each final deliverable

6. PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE

Base Period – September 1, 2025 – August 31, 2026.

Option Period 1 – September 1, 2026 – August 31, 2027 Option Period 2 – September 1, 2027 – August 31, 2028

7. HOURS OF OPERATION

Primary core hours that the contractor shall be available are Monday-Friday 8:00 AM-5:00 PM EST. Hours of availability may be altered with prior approval by the COR. Operations support personnel should be available during Core Hours and for on call TA and SP requests. The contractor shall follow FAR and PBGC policy regarding holidays and inclement weather in coordination with the COR.

8. GOVERNMENT FURNISHED PROPERTY & INFORMATION

The Government shall provide all necessary information, data and documents to the Contractor for work required under this contract. The Contractor shall use Government furnished information, data and documents only for the performance of work under this contract and shall be responsible for returning all Government furnished information, data and documents to the Government at the end of the performance period. The Contractor shall not release Government furnished information, data and documents to outside parties without the prior and explicit consent of the Contracting Officer. The Contractor shall possess the capability to store and safeguard from unauthorized disclosure of the Government Furnished Information and Data required for this effort. The Government shall provide the equipment necessary to meet this requirement. When required, PBGC will authorize GFE to operate from an alternate site location.

8. PLACE OF PERFORMANCE

The workplace location is at 445 12th Street SW, Washington, DC 20024. The work shall be performed at the government site where telework will be permitted in accordance with the clause incorporated at award and is at the discretion in writing by the COR. The Government will not pay for travel between telework locations and PBGC headquarters, for parking, or for local travel as defined by OPM locality pay (see https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/payleave/salaries-wages/2020/locality-pay-area-definitions/#DC-MD-VA-WV-PA). The Contractor must maintain EST operating hours and is expected to be available during 8:30 am – 5:00pm EST and all work shall be performed within the United States.

https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/payleave/salaries-wages/2020/locality-pay-area-definitions/#DC-MD-VA-WV-PA https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/payleave/salaries-wages/2020/locality-pay-area-definitions/#DC-MD-VA-WV-PA

Section 3: INSTRUCTIONS TO CONTRACTORS

3.1 Commitment of the Government

This solicitation does not commit the Government to award a purchase order.

3.2 Communications and Questions

All communications concerning this RFP, shall be made by email to Frank Argenziano (Argenziano.Frank@pbgc.gov) and Tre Brummell (Brummell.Joseph@pbgc.gov). All questions, in response to this solicitation shall be in writing and received by the Government on or before May 15th, 2025 at 12:00 PM Eastern Time. Questions shall identify the applicable section, page number, and paragraph. The Government will provide a list of all questions received with the Government responses in the form of an amendment to the RFP. The Government may or may not consider questions received after this date.

3.3 Proposal Submission Due Date and Time

Proposals shall include three (3) separate documents that address the requirements. The contractor shall provide – (1) a cover letter, (2) an Experience & Past Performance proposal (Volume 1), and (3) a Price Proposal (Volume 2) in Adobe PDF format by email to Frank Argenziano (Argenziano.Frank@pbgc.gov) and Tre Brummell (Brummell.Joseph@pbgc.gov) by the RFP submission deadline.

3.4 Proposal Preparation Instructions

a. All proposals must conform to these instructions.

b. Proposals shall be separated into three documents: a cover letter, Volume 1 – Experience and Past Performance, Volume 2 – Price Proposal. Volume 1 shall be completed in Adobe PDF format and Volume 2 shall be completed in Microsoft Excel format. Both volumes shall be submitted by email to the contacts listed in the preceding section.

c. Each document shall reference the solicitation number.

d. Cover Letter. The cover letter shall address, at a minimum, the following information:

i. Business name and address.

ii. Business size for the NAICS code applicable to this work.

iii. Unique Entity Identification (UEI).

iv. Any known organizational conflict of interest (OCI) or appearance of OCI that would result from award of this contract to the business submitting the proposal.

v. Any assumptions about the work that the contractor relied upon in developing its proposal.

vi. A statement of agreement to all terms, conditions, and provisions included in the solicitation including compliance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

mailto:Argenziano.Frank@pbgc.gov mailto:Brummell.Joseph@pbgc.gov mailto:Argenziano.Frank@pbgc.gov mailto:Brummell.Joseph@pbgc.gov

vii. Corporate point(s) of contact, including email address(es) and phone number(s).

e. Volume 1 – Corporate Experience & Past Performance Proposal

1. The contractor shall provide up to three (3) instances of corporate experience performed within the past seven (7) years which indicates work the same or similar to the work described in the PWS. The contractor must provide evidence that the corporate experience is substantially similar in size, scope and complexity to that required by the solicitation and NAICS Category 541 - Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services.

The contractor shall include a description for each corporate experience instance referenced, to include the following:

The date The dollar value Evidence of similar size, scope and complexity to this requirement

2. The contractor shall provide up to three (3) past performance references related to their corporate experience which includes the name, email, phone number, position title, and corporation or agency name. The contractor shall also provide contract numbers for the associated past performance appraisals in CPARS.

3. This volume shall not exceed three (3) typed pages using a minimum of 10-point font. The page count does not include the cover page.

f. Volume 2 – Price Proposal. The contractor shall complete Attachment 7 – Pricing Schedule Table in Excel format.

Section 4: EVALUATION FACTORS FOR AWARD

4.1 Evaluation of Proposals

PBGC will evaluate proposals in four (4) phases as described below. Any proposals deemed to be not among the most competitive during any phase of the evaluation will be ineligible for award and removed from further consideration.

a. Phase 1 – Proposal Acceptability.

1. Ensure proposals are in accordance with the terms, conditions, and instructions of this

RFP, and that the business submitting the proposal is registered in the System for Award Management and otherwise eligible to receive award. Any proposal deemed ineligible due to substantive flaws in the proposal or contractor’s status will be removed from further consideration for award.

b. Phase 2 – Price.

1. A price analysis shall be performed where proposal prices will be determined as fair and reasonable or unreasonable. Any proposal containing an excessively high price will be deemed ineligible for award and removed from further consideration.

c. Phase 3 – Corporate Experience, Past Performance and Price.

1. Corporate experience shall be evaluated based on recency, relevancy and quantity. PBGC will also consider price under this phase.

i. A rating will be ascribed to each instance based on recency using these definitions.

An overall recency rating with the same definition will be assigned for the proposal’s corporate experience.

• Recent – Effort is active and ongoing or has a completion date within the past 3 years.

• Somewhat recent – Effort has a completion date of greater than 3 years but no more than 7 years.

• Not Recent – Effort has a completion date of greater than 7 years.

ii. A rating will be ascribed to each instance based on relevancy using these definitions. An overall relevancy rating with the same definition will be assigned for the proposal’s corporate experience.

• Relevant – Effort involves a similar scope and requirements that match this solicitation.

• Somewhat relevant – Effort involves some of the scope and requirements that match this solicitation.

• Not relevant - Effort involves little or none of the scope and requirements that match this solicitation

iii. The number of corporate experiences will be totaled (0-3).

2. Past performance shall be evaluated based on the quality of the Corporate Experience instances provided through an appraisal of the Past Performance references submitted in the contractor’s proposal. An individual confidence rating will be ascribed to each Past performance reference using the same overall confidence rating metrics.

PBGC will make a good-faith effort to reach past-performance points of contact. PBGC will not penalize a contractor for lack of past performance references or because its points of contact are non-responsive; however, all else being equal, a contractor with references that support a substantial or satisfactory confidence past performance record will be deemed more competitive than a contractor that does not have any past performance record available to evaluate.

3. An overall confidence rating will be assigned separately to each proposal’s Corporate Experience and Past Performance.

• Substantial Confidence - A rating of substantial confidence shall be assigned based on the agency’s expectation that the contractor will provide a high quality of service that exceeds the performance standards set in this requirement.

• Satisfactory confidence - A corporate experience rating of…