CRRI_LFO_JEFO_Redacted_1.pdf

This document is a Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity (J&A) issued by the Department of the Interior's Interior Business Center for Solicitation #140D0426R0074.

The Government is awarding a one-year follow-on task order to Essex Management, LLC under the Biomedical Information Technology, Software Development, and Informatics Support (BITSDIS) Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to continue providing professional informatics, software development, bioinformatics, data science, and technical support services to the Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (CBIIT) at the National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute (NCI). The contractor will support active production systems including the Cancer Immunologic Data Center (CIDC), MatchBOX and supporting tools (Correlative Sample Management System, Data Loading and Processing tool, and Treatment Planning Engine/Business Rules Engine), all operating in a FISMA Moderate environment on contractor-managed cloud infrastructure. The current support contract expires August 31, 2026, and this task order bridges the gap until a new competitive contract vehicle can be awarded in Quarter 3 of fiscal year 2027. The Government justifies the sole-source award under FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(C) as a logical follow-on to the original BITSDIS IDIQ order (140D0421D0007), citing Essex's system ownership and institutional knowledge of custom codebases, technical dependencies, and business logic that cannot be replicated without significant operational risk, the contractor-managed cloud infrastructure dependency requiring complex migration, and the 9-12 month minimum realistic transition timeline that exceeds the available performance period. Pricing will be based on Essex's previously determined fair and reasonable IDIQ rates with additional discounts requested at order award.