Attach 11 - FAR 52.212-2 Addendum-Eval Factors_082423.docx

ADDENDUM TO FAR 52.212-2 - EVALUATION FACTORS FOR AWARD

1.0 BASIS FOR AWARD

The government anticipates awarding one, five (5) year, Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract resulting from this Request for Proposal (RFP) to the Offeror who presents the best value to the government. The government shall use a combination of Acceptable/Unacceptable and subjective trade-off methodologies as the basis for award as described below.

1. Factor I, Small Business Participation, shall be evaluated as “Acceptable” or “Unacceptable.” This contract is a competitive full and open acquisition with a requirement of 30% small business participation. Large businesses without a 30% small business participation will not be considered.

2. Factor II, Technical Capability shall be evaluated in two steps and given an overall subjective technical rating based on how well it meets the government’s requirements. The Technical Capability Factor has two Subfactors: Subfactor 1, Technical Gate, will be evaluated as “Acceptable” or “Unacceptable” and Subfactor 2, Technical Approach, will be given a subjective technical rating based on how well it meets the government’s requirements.

3. Factor III, Past Performance, shall be evaluated as “Acceptable” or “Unacceptable.”

4. Factor IV, Price, shall be evaluated for completeness, fair and reasonable pricing, and unbalanced pricing.

5. Factor II, Technical, is considered more important than Factor IV, Price. This may result in an award to a higher rated, higher priced Offeror, where the Source Selection Authority (SSA) reasonably determines the Technical Capability of the higher priced Offeror outweighs the price difference. Only Offerors with "Acceptable" ratings in Factor I, Small Business Participation and Factor III, Past Performance will be included in the tradeoff. Offerors with "Unacceptable" in any Factor or Subfactor will be eliminated from the competition.

The government reserves the right to make no award at all. This acquisition will result in a hybrid contract with both Firm Fixed Price and Time and Material CLINs.

1.1 This source selection will be conducted in accordance with FAR Part 12, Acquisition of Commercial Items, and FAR Part 15, Contracting by Negotiation, as supplemented by the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS), and the Department of the Air Force Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DAFFARS). These regulations are available electronically at https://www.acquisition.gov/content/regulations. The Contract will be awarded to the offeror deemed responsible in accordance with the FAR, as supplemented, whose proposal conforms to the solicitation’s requirements (to include all stated terms, conditions, representations, certifications, and all other information required by Section L– Instructions to Offerors, as detailed in Attachment 10 of this solicitation, and is judged, based on the evaluation factors to represent the best value to the government. This may result in an award to a higher rated, higher priced offeror or a lower-priced, lower-rated proposal if the government determines that the premium associated with the higher-rated proposal is not justified a where the decision is consistent with the evaluation factors, and the Decision Authority reasonably determines that performance of the technically acceptable higher priced offeror outweighs the price difference. The Source Selection Authority will base the source selection decision on an integrated assessment of proposals against all source selection criteria in the solicitation (described below).

2.0 EVALUATION FACTORS AND RATING METHODOLOGY

There are four evaluation factors:

Factor I: Small Business Participation Factor II: Technical Capability Subfactor 1: Technical Gate, Written Gateway Question/Oral Presentation Subfactor 2: Technical Approach Technical Area 2.1: Personnel Management Plan

Factor III: Past Performance Factor IV: Price

2.1 EVALUATION FACTOR OVERVIEW

The Contracting Officer will ensure the offeror is compliant for a Facility Clearance, System Award Management (SAM), and in government Furnished Information (GFI) and International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR). To be considered compliant for Facility Clearance, the Contracting Officer (CO) will validate each Prime Offerors Facility Clearance (FCL) via the Defense Information Security System (DISS). The CO will validate that the offeror is registered in SAM. The CO will ensure the offeror is registered and approved in ITAR.

Offerors will be notified via email if its FCL, SAM, and GFI and ITAR are validated. If the Offeror does not meet the aforementioned criteria the Offeror will be deemed “noncompliant” and eliminated from consideration for award and will not be evaluated further. The Offeror will receive written notice IAW FAR 15.503.

The government will evaluate proposals of the compliant offerors as follows:

Step 1: Factor I Small Business Participation, will be evaluated as acceptable or unacceptable. Only acceptable proposals move forward.

Step 2: Factor II Technical Capability, Subfactor 1 Technical Gate will be evaluated as acceptable or unacceptable. Only acceptable proposals move forward.

Step 3: Proposals found acceptable in step 1 and 2 will be move forward to be evaluated for Factor II, subfactor 2, Technical Approach. Factor III Past Performance, and Factor IV Price.

Step 4: The government will perform a tradeoff of proposals with acceptable/neutral Past Performance between Factor I, subfactor 2 Technical Approach and Factor IV Price.

2.2. EVALUATION FACTORS

2.2.1 – Factor I: Small Business Participation

The offerors Small Business Participation Plan will be evaluated to ensure it meets the objective of 30% small business participation and will be evaluated on an acceptable/unacceptable basis as follows:

If an unacceptable rating is received, Factor I will be considered unacceptable and will not be evaluated further.

2.2.2 Factor II: Technical Capability

Each subfactor will be evaluated separately. Subfactor 1 is rated as acceptable/unacceptable. Must receive acceptable rating for the written gateway question AND the presentation gateway question. If an unacceptable rating is received for either portion, the overall rating for Subfactor 1 will be considered unacceptable and the proposal will not be evaluated further.

Technical and Risk Definitions from Tables 2 and 3 below shall be used in the evaluation and will result in a combined overall rating using the Table 1 as follows:

Table 1. Combined Technical/Risk Ratings

Table 2. Technical Evaluation Definitions

Table 3. Risk Evaluation Definitions

of weaknesses which may have a moderate potential to cause disruption of schedule, increased cost, or degradation of performance. Special contractor emphasis and close Government monitoring will likely be able to overcome any difficulties.

2.2.2.1 Subfactor 1 Technical Gate: Written Gateway Question/Oral Presentation The Gateway Question is to ascertain whether the offeror has sufficient understanding of technical concepts and requirements of STORM to warrant further analysis of their proposal. Offerors must answer the question within the page limit. An acceptable response is considered to address the combat engineering function and context of a joint force environment. The topics of the Gateway Question can be found in Attachment 10, Addendum to FAR 52.212-1_Instructions to Offerors.

Oral presentations shall discuss the offeror’s proposed answer to the gateway question. The oral presentation is evaluated on an acceptable/unacceptable basis. To be considered acceptable, the presentation should include solutions to the gateway question and explain why those solutions are adopted. The presentation also should walk through the development, integration, and implementation processes of the solutions. During the presentation, an offeror might be asked to provide details on the design concept and/or to describe potential applications to other areas of STORM combat modeling.

Note: There is a one (1) hour time limit for the presentation and the contracting officer shall terminate the presentation after the one-hour mark.

The written and oral portion of the gateway will receive an adjectival rating in accordance with the below table:

Table 1. Combined Technical/Risk Ratings

Offerors receiving an Acceptable rating for Factor II, Subfactor 1 will move to Factor II, Subfactor 2 Technical Approach.

2.2.2.2 Subfactor 2 Technical Approach

The three Technical Areas below will be evaluated using Tables 2, and 3 above and will be given an overall rating in accordance with Table 1 above. This rating will become the Factor II Technical Capability overall rating.

Technical Area 2.1: Personnel Management Plan The government will evaluate the offerors’ Personnel Management Plan to determine how the offeror intends to provide and retain qualified personnel, including key personnel described in PWS section 2.7.

Technical Area 2.2: Software Management Plan The government will evaluate the offerors’ Software Management Plan to determine the offerors’ approach to ensure the integrity of the STORM software architecture and framework. The Software Management Plan must discuss implementation of Risk Management Framework (RMF) process for STORM in accordance with the Air Force Instruction (AFI) 17-101 to be compliant with the Department of Defense Instruction 8510.01.

Technical Area 2.3: User Service Plan The government will evaluate the offerors User Service Plan to determine how the offeror will successfully provide user support activities, including the user group meeting, help desk, and training. The government will evaluate the User Service Plan for compliance to all government rules and regulations, such as ITAR, to prevent an unauthorized user from accessing protected data.

2.2.3 – Factor III: Past Performance Offerors without a record of recent/relevant past performance or information on past performance is so sparse that no meaningful past performance rating can be reasonably assigned will be rated as Neutral and allowed to proceed as if Acceptable.

Each individual PPQ submission shall be from separate work efforts and will be reviewed and rated on three aspects: recency, relevancy, and quality (see sections a, b, and c below). The Government will consider the offeror’s past performance as an entire team (in the case of joint ventures or where primes propose with substantial subcontractors) or on an individual basis for offerors proposing on their own. However, if a signed commitment is not fully executed by both parties and provided with the Past Performance Proposal, only the Offeror’s PPQ will be evaluated. Once all an offeror’s individual submissions are reviewed, a factor-level rating called a Overall Performance Rating will be assigned according to section d below.

The Past Performance Questionnaire (PPQ) will be used to evaluate the recency, relevancy, and quality in performance of the contract submission as described below:

a. Recency – For past performance to be considered recent it must consist of an effort that had a period of performance taking place within the last three (3) years with a minimum of 6-months continued performance. Past performance on the PPQ submissions are considered acceptable or unacceptable in regard to recency in accordance with the below table:

Past Performance Recency Ratings

Unacceptable Period of performance for work not within last three years and/or did not have a minimum of 6-months continued performance.

b. Relevancy – For past performance to be considered relevant the offeror should consider the similarity of product/service/support, complexity, dollar value, contract type, and key personnel use. Relevancy in regard to scope, magnitude of effort, and complexities will be based on, but not limited to, similarities between the given past performance and this solicitation in terms of the following subject areas:

1. Campaign Modeling

2. ANSI/IEEE 828-1998 System and Software Standards

3. Software Development

4. Help-Desk Support

5. Website Support (Restricted Access)

6. Classroom Presentation & Training Support

7. Courseware Development

In order to be acceptable, this solicitation requires at least one (1) PPQ for a Prime contractor shall include effort from either subject area 1, 2, or 3 above, and PPQ efforts in total (Prime and Subcontractor/Teaming Partner(s)) shall at a minimum cover subject areas 1, 2, and 3 cumulatively. Subcontractor PPQs may include effort from any of the 7 subject areas. The offeror’s past performance relevancy for each submission provided will be given an adjectival rating in accordance with the below table:

Past Performance Relevancy Ratings

c. Quality – This aspect of past performance evaluation is to establish the overall quality of the offeror’s past performance. Each recent past performance submission reviewed will receive an assessment of the performance quality. The past performance quality for each citation will receive and adjectival rating from the below table:

Past Performance Quality Ratings

d. Overall Performance Rating – As a result of recency, relevancy, and quality rating for the past performance submissions offerors receive one integrated overall Past Performance rating. Although the past performance evaluation reviews each PPQ submission, the resulting performance rating is made at the factor level and represents and overall evaluation of the contractor performance. The overall past performance assessment rating will receive an adjectival rating from the below table:

Past Performance Overall Rating

Acceptable Based on the offeror’s, and subcontractor’s, performance record, the Government has a reasonable expectation that the offeror will successfully perform the required effort, or the offeror’s performance record is unknown (see note above).

Neutral No recent/relevant performance record is available or the offeror’s performance record is so sparse that no meaningful confidence assessment rating can be reasonably assigned. The offeror may not be evaluated favorably or unfavorably on the factor of past performance.

Unacceptable Based on the offeror’s, and subcontractor’s, performance record, the Government does not have a reasonable expectation that the offeror will be able to successfully perform the required effort.

Offerors receiving an Unacceptable rating will be eliminated from the competition and will not be included in the trade-off analysis.

2.2.4 – Factor IV: Price The Offeror’s Price proposal will be evaluated for award purposes, based on the total price proposed for the core task requirements (CLINs 0001 and 0004) and the Transition-out Plan (CLIN 4007) in the Cost and Pricing Schedule and the proposed prices in the Rate Schedule (see Attachment 9). The proposal will be evaluated for completeness, fair and reasonable pricing, and balanced pricing.

1. Complete. An offeror’s price proposal is complete when it conforms to the requirements of the solicitation as required in Attachment 10, section 5.4, for Factor IIIIV, Price. The Offeror’s proposed price and other information will be evaluated to ensure continuity and traceability of prices to the technical volume and between the initial proposal and any revisions thereto. The review will determine the adequacy of the Offeror’s proposal in addressing and fulfilling the RFP requirements.

2. Reasonableness of Total Evaluated Price. The price that will be considered for Best Value determination is the Offeror’s total evaluated price, as determined by the government. For the purpose of source selection, the total evaluated price will be developed from prices proposed in Attachment 9. The total evaluated price will not be the same as the contract maximum ceiling price. The TEP will include evaluation of FAR 52.217-8, Option to Extend Services. This option to extend the contract term shall be evaluated as part of the initial evaluation, whereby any resultant exercise of this option is within scope of the pending contract. The option provision may be exercised more than once, but the total extension of performance hereunder shall not exceed six (6) months. Offerors are required only to price the base and option CLINs. Offerors shall not submit a price for the potential six (6) month extension of services period because the government will use the price of the final option year to calculate the price of the six (6) month extension.

Comparison of proposed prices received in response to this solicitation is the preferred and intended price analysis technique. Other techniques and procedures found in FAR 15.404-1, if deemed necessary and reasonable, may be used to ensure a fair and reasonable price.

3. Unbalanced Pricing. Proposals will be analyzed to determine if the prices are materially unbalanced. Unbalanced pricing exists when, despite an acceptable total evaluated price, the price of one or more contract line items is significantly over or understated as indicated by the application of price analysis techniques. The Contracting Officer reserves the right to reject an offer if it is determined that the lack of balanced pricing poses an unacceptable risk to the government in accordance with FAR Part 15.404-1(g).

3.0 Discussions

The government reserves the right to award without discussions. However, the government reserves the right to hold discussions using Evaluation Notices (ENs) if, during evaluation it is determined to be in the best interest of the government. Therefore, the offeror's initial offer should contain the offeror's best terms from a price, technical capability, and past performance standpoint. Any discussions will be conducted in accordance with FAR 15.306. If a competitive range is established, the government may limit the number of proposals to the greatest number that will permit an efficient competition among the most highly rated proposals.

4.0 Award

The government shall select the source whose proposal offers the best value in accordance with the established criteria of this RFP.

END OF SECTION