V3241134_SSJ_for_Posting.pdf

Procurement Request No. V3241134

V220T.12 (01/15)

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY

VOLPE NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS CENTER (VOLPE CENTER)

ENVIRONMENTAL MEASUREMENT AND MODELING DIVISION, V324

SOLE SOURCE JUSTIFICATION

A. Description of Supplies/Services. The Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Environment and Energy (FAA AEE) is developing a comprehensive suite of software tools that will allow for thorough assessment of the environmental effects of aviation, known as the Aviation Environmental Design Tool (AEDT). As this tool matures, FAA AEE has a need for supplemental tools and programs to be developed and modified to take advantage of the advancements provided under AEDT.

The Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (Volpe Center) has provided technical expertise and support to FAA AEE for several decades in the area of aircraft noise measurement, analysis, and modeling, and has initiated similar efforts in the area of aircraft emissions and ambient air quality modeling. Significant among these efforts is support to FAA/AEE in the development of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), including AEDT, environmental policy and R&D work related to environmental tools, environmental management systems (EMS), and operational procedures to mitigate aviation noise and emissions impacts.

The Contractor shall update a legacy, supplemental software tool, the Area Equivalent Model (AEM), to work with AEDT. This will entail updating AEM to interface with AEDT and the AEDT databases, finalizing the updated AEM software, and updating the AEM documentation accordingly. This will include software engineering and technical writing.

The Contractor shall furnish all necessary qualified personnel, materials, equipment, facilities and systems operations services required to update AEM to work with AEDT. This effort is focused on the following major aspects:

Update AEM software tool to work with AEDT and AEDT databases Support verification and testing of updated AEM tool Develop updated AEM documentation accordingly

B. Market Research. The original AEM software tool was generated by the ATAC Corporation (ATAC) for FAA AEE under the following contracts:

DTFAWA-11-D-00019, Task Order No. 18;

DTFAWA-11-D-00019, Task Order No. 34; and DTFAWA-11-D-00019, Task Order No. 50.

In addition to AEM expertise, knowledge of AEDT development is essential to this effort. FAA AEE, Volpe, ATAC, Metron Aviation, Foliage, and MacroSys are the main contributors to AEDT development and are considered the top experts in the fields of AEDT analysis and input development. This market research evaluated these experts in the context of this AEM update, and resulted in the following findings:

Among these entities, only ATAC has participated in the coding of the original AEM.

ATAC led the original coding of the AEM and retains within its software development staff detailed knowledge of the AEDT software and the current state of the previous AEM effort, and internal documentation of those efforts.

Since there were no external deliverables of the original AEM available to the public, no other organization has the institutional knowledge and access to the AEM scenario inputs, results and analysis materials required to complete the AEM update described in the SOW.

C. Supporting Rationale.

(1) Sole Source: Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.

(i) This AEM update builds upon the detailed work completed as part of the original AEM coding. ATAC was the sole organization performing the original AEM coding, and the results are currently unpublished. Only ATAC has experience conducting the previous AEM coding, and only ATAC has access to the AEM coding architecture.

(ii) Not contracting with ATAC to perform the required AEM update would deprive the Volpe Center, FAA AEE, and the aviation community of the opportunity to improve a useful tool and generate a more efficient method of modeling

Procurement Request No. V3241134

V220T.12 (01/15) aircraft impact on the environment. The Volpe Center risks the following consequences if ATAC is not contracted to perform the AEM update described in the SOW:

No other research institute is known to have generated a corresponding AEM tool;

It is unfeasible to expect the Volpe Center acoustic analysis experts assigned to this project to be able to replicate on short notice (updated tool and final report due in September 2017) the previous AEM coding conducted by ATAC;

and

The Volpe Center's abilities to efficiently plan the logistics of such complex environmental modeling work and to effectively analyze modeling results have been a large part of the success of the Environmental Measurement and Modeling Division’s work in recent years, and it is in the Volpe Center's best interests to provide this additional modeling component, only available through a fully updated AEM, to FAA AEE and other project stakeholders.

(iii) The estimated time it would take for another contractor to become acquainted with the AEM methodology and complete the AEM update is two years. The estimated cost impact of the new contractor repeating the AEM coding, including the required updates, is $170,000.

(2) Brand Name: N/A.

(3) Unusual and Compelling Urgency: N/A.