ATTACHMENT 3 - Instructions to Offerors.doc

ATTACHMENT 3 -- INSTRUCTIONS for OFFERORS

Technical Proposal Submission Requirements- To assure timely and equitable evaluations of proposals, offerors must follow the instructions contained herein. Offerors are required to meet all solicitation requirements, including terms and conditions, in addition to those identified as evaluation factors or subfactors. Failure to meet a requirement may result in an offeror being ineligible for award. Offerors must clearly identify any exception to the solicitation terms and conditions and provide complete accompanying rationale. Offers received after the closing date and time indicated in Block 8 of the Standard form 1449 shall be considered “late.”

Proposals shall be submitted to:

U.S. Department of Labor

OASAM Office of Procurement Services

200 Constitution Avenue, NW

Room S-4307

Attn: Jennifer Snook

Washington, DC 20210

The response shall consist of four (4) separate parts:

Part I – Price Proposal

Part II – Technical Proposal

Part II – Past Performance Information

Electronic Copy of entire proposal

Specific Instructions:

Part I – Price Proposal

(a) Submit the original plus three (3) copies.

(b) Complete blocks 12, 17, and 30 of the SF 1449

(c) Insert proposed unit prices and extended prices in Section B – Price Cost Schedule for each Contract Line

Item Number (CLIN), including all option periods. Proposed hourly rates shall be the fully loaded rates.

(d) Complete necessary fill-ins and certifications in provisions in the RFP.

Part II – Technical Proposal

(a) Submit the original plus three (3) copies.

(b) No prices shall be included in the Technical Proposal. A 50-page limitation has been set for the Technical Proposal. Excluded from this limit is the transmittal letter, title page, table of contents, list of figures and abbreviations, organizational charts. (This limitation is based on the number of pages when printed single-spaced on 8 ½” x 11” paper with a 1” margin in 12-point font size. Font size used in figures and tables can be 8-point or higher as long as the content is legible.)

(c) Offerors must submit a comprehensive Technical Proposal to provide a basis for sound evaluation by the Government. Proposals that merely offer to provide the requirements as specified in the solicitation, or “parrot back” the requirements of the solicitation, may be determined technically unacceptable.

(d) The Technical Proposal will be evaluated on a Pass/Fail basis; only offerors receiving an overall pass rating for each subfactor will be evaluated for price and past performance.

(e) The Technical Proposal shall address the following evaluation subfactors described below:

1. Technical Project Management

The offeror shall demonstrate the following:

· an expert ability in developing and maintaining detailed work plans in a Work Breakdown Structure and Operations Plan

· an expert ability to provide quality assurance of work orders to meet requirements; intermediate ability to develop work order time and labor hours estimates; System Development Lifecycle approach, configuration management process experience, change management, testing, and performance reporting

· at least an intermediate ability to provide project reporting in compliance with DOL and OSHA standards

· at least an intermediate ability to provide tracking and analysis using Microsoft Project.

2. Security for OSHANet

The offeror shall demonstrate the following:

· expert ability to incorporate and maintain security on all OSHANet UNIX and Windows servers

· expert ability to provide active network monitoring; network-based intrusion detection; host-based intrusion detection; password integrity maintenance; host security hardening; physical systems security; maintenance of existing firewall software and virus protection

· the expert ability to perform evaluation and hardening necessary to address known and new vulnerabilities as identified by vulnerability scanning, US-CERTS, Office of the Inspector General audits

· expert ability to perform Contingency and Disaster Recovery Planning and Operations (planning, documentation, testing, and operations in case of a disaster)

· at least an intermediate ability report computer security incidents immediately and appropriate action taken to prevent vulnerability to OSHANet as defined in the DOL’s Incident Categories and Reporting Times

· at least an intermediate ability to review, maintain and update all documents, including POAMs, US-CERT, SCT&E, CA, SSA, SSP, etc. as required by the DOL Computer Security Handbook (CSH), DOL SDLCM and independent and OIG audits.

3. Network Administration

The offeror shall demonstrate the following:

· the expert ability to maintain the operation of the OSHANet and monitor the systems to meet the reliability, availability, integrity, and performance requirements

· an expert ability to maintain reliability and availability of WAN/LAN architectures and communications devices/server, and email environment for 3,000 geographically dispersed users

· an expert ability to maintain operations and continuity of OSHANet devices. Continuity includes backups, restores, and hot site management

· at least an intermediate ability to develop and maintain network planning and design, including research on tools and development of white papers.

4. Performance Monitoring

The offeror shall demonstrate the following:

· an expert ability to use a problem tracking system to analyze user support performance

· an expert ability to evaluate data communication requirements and perform analyses to determine hardware, software, and telecommunications support services to meet requirements

· expert ability to identify, isolate, report, track, document, and resolve Tier 2 and Tier 3 end user hardware and software problems related to the network

· expert ability to implement configuration management methodology for all system changes, from requirements, analysis, planning, evaluation, testing, security posture, and implementation

· expert ability to identify measure, manage, and mitigate vulnerabilities, problems and risks

· ability to periodically conduct a survey or other mechanism to assess level of customer

5. Technical Documentation

· an ability for intermediate ability for maintaining and developing systems and applications documentation, including standard operating procedure documents.

· intermediate ability for maintaining systems security documentation.

· intermediate ability for maintaining documentation of network configurations, including use of Visio

· intermediate ability for maintaining documentation of system development life cycle plans

· experience in maintaining and developing project service level agreements, Memorandums of Understanding, and project proposals

· experience in preparation of detailed technical specifications and standards

· previous experience in maintaining versioning control for documents.

Part III - Past Performance Information

Submit one copy of the past performance information.

Past performance is defined as an assessment of how well the offeror did its work in the past. The Government will evaluate past performance of three or more relevant contracts performed within the past three years to determine how well the contractor performed on similar contracts. Offerors are advised that the Government may use past performance information obtained from centralized past performance databases and sources other than those identified by the offeror and the information may be used for both the responsibility determination and the best value decision. References provided may include those entered into with Government agencies and the private sector. For contractors with no relevant corporate past performance experience, the Government may take into account information regarding the past performance of predecessor companies, key personnel with relevant past performance, or subcontractors that will perform key aspects of the requirement; however, the absence of past performance data will be rated neither favorably or unfavorably. The Government will evaluate based on quality, customer services, timeliness of performance, business relations, and whether or not the reference would select the offeror’s firm again.

The past performance evaluation will be accomplished through assignment of a confidence assessment rating based on the contractor’s prior quality of performance on relevant work. The Performance Confidence Assessment represents the evaluation of an offeror’s present and past work record to assess the Government's confidence in the offeror’s probability of successfully performing as proposed. The Government will evaluate the offeror's demonstrated record of contract compliance in supplying products that meet the user's needs, including but not limited to, controlling costs, adhering to schedules (including the administrative aspects of performance), and performance (reasonable and cooperative behavior and commitment to customer satisfaction, and generally, the contractor’s business-like concern for the interest of the customer).

The Offeror shall provide the information identified below in its response to Past Performance. The Offeror is cautioned to include all relevant past performance information, including corrective actions taken, in their Proposals as the Government may award without discussions using only the information provided by the Offeror in the initial proposal submission and customer provided/Government obtained past performance information. The Offeror may be given the opportunity to address adverse past performance information; however, this exchange of information is for clarification only and not for purposes of discussion.

(a) Past Performance information is limited to two (2) pages per past performance reference

(b) For each of the projects, the Offeror shall provide the following information:

1. Project Title or Name

2. Name and address of Client or Contracting Entity

3. Names, phone numbers, and email addresses, if available, of the CO and COTR and/or Commercial Buyer and Project Manager.

4. Contract or Order Number

5. Contract/ Order Value (Base plus all options)

6. Period of performance (including the original scheduled completion date established at contract/task order award and the actual completion date, with explanation of any variance). If the reference contract is not an existing contract, provide a brief explanation on why the contract is no longer current;

7. Type of contract (i.e. FFP, T&M, BPA, etc.);

8. Description of Requirement to include

(a) a concise description of the scope and complexity of the project and its relevancy to OSHANet

(b) project objectives/performance goals, including financial benefits, and whether they were achieved;

(c) major deliverables produced, any awards or recognition that were received for superior performance and/or significant cost savings;

(d) any unanticipated challenges and the corresponding remedial actions

(e) any innovative technologies and/or re-engineered business processes proposed and adopted by the customer that resulted in service improvement and/or cost reduction.

Part 4 - Electronic Copy In addition to hard copy volumes, an identical electronic copy must be provided on a CD accompanying the hard copy of the proposal submission. Email submissions will not be accepted.