FINAL - EFO With ADDENDUM_Redacted.pdf

CUI

Controlled Unclassified Information Source Selection Sensitive Information - See FAR 2.101 & 3.104

DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY

DLA CONTRACTING SERVICES OFF CE - PHILADELPH A

700 ROBBINS AVENUE

PH LADELPHIA PENNSYLVANIA

19111-5092

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY (FAR 16.505(b)(2)) ADDENDUM

Upon the basis of the following justification, I hereby approve the issuance of the contractual action described below using an exception to fair opportunity, pursuant to the authority cited herein.

1. IDENTIFICATION OF THE AGENCY AND THE CONTRACTING ACTIVITY:

Requiring Activity:

Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Information Operations-J62

8725 John J. Kingman Road Fort Belvoir, Virginia 22060-6221

Contracting Activity:

DLA Contracting Services Office Philadelphia (DCSO-P)

700 Robbins Avenue Philadelphia, PA 19111

2. NATURE AND/OR DESCRIPTION OF THE ACTION BEING APPROVED

Pursuant to FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B), the action being approved is an exception to the fair opportunity process. This justification authorizes the use of other than full and open competition to award a modification to a firm-fixed price task order for support services for the Procurement Integrated Enterprise Environment (PIEE) Common Operating Environment (COE) Global Exchange (GEX) Sustainment Support. This acquisition will be a sole-source award pursuant to the GEX Core Task Order SP4709-21-F-0007, which was competitively awarded via the J6 Enterprise Technology Services (JETS) contract vehicle. The GEX Core Task Order was awarded to Northrop Grumman on November 12, 2020. Per the Novation agreement, signed December 7, 2021, the current contract is awarded to Peraton.

Controlled by: DLA DCSO – Philadelphia (DCSO-P) CUI Category: General Procurement and Acquisition / Source

Selection Information see FAR 2.101 & 3.104 Distribution/Dissemination Controls: FED ONLY

3. A DESCRIPTION OF THE SUPPLIES AND/OR SERVICES REQUIRED TO

MEET THE AGENCY’S NEEDS/ESTIMATED DOLLAR AMOUNT:

The GEX Core Task Order (SP4709-21-F-0007) supports a Department of Defense (DoD) initiative to develop a common set of tools and services for DoD contracts. The PIEE COE GEX Sustainment Services Contract SP4 709-17-D-0022, Task Order SP4709-22-F-0067, was awarded on August 23, 2022, with a 12-month base period and two 12-month option periods, for an estimated dollar value of . The PIEE COE GEX Sustainment Services task order requires contractor support for work that falls under the areas of task management; integration program development and management; integration requirements validation and prototyping;

business process reengineering; production mapping; functional process improvement; and development and test management for standard, common, legacy, and migrated applications.

This will be a firm-fixed price task order with a twelve (12) month base period and two (12) month option periods, as follows:

Period of Performances (PoPs) (Base Year): 29 Aug 2022 to 28 Aug 2023 Option Year 1: 29 Aug 2023 to 28 Aug 2024 Option Year 2: 29 Aug 2024 to 28 Aug 2025

The most recently awarded MOD, P00004 increased the contract’s dollar value to .

The estimated dollar value of this modification is . The PIEE ECWM GEX Support MOD, P0005, will be completed within two PoPs under the Contract SP4 09-17-D-0022, Task Order SP4709-22-F-0067. The base Period of Performance (PoP) will be from 27 July 2023 through 28 August 2023, during the task order’s Base Period. The option PoP will be from 29 August 2023 through 28 August 2024, concurrent with the task order’s Option Period 1. The total PoP for this Modification will increase the total task order dollar value to .

ADDENDUM:

The proposed modification (MOD) is a scope increase to the original GEX Core task order to integrate GEX services, that are currently provided to the PIEE Program, with the Enterprise Contract Writing Module (ECWM). ECWM has recently become part of the PIEE Program and now requires additional services from the GEX contractor as part of the integration process.

Peraton will provide a small portion of like services, that are currently being provided to PIEE, with a larger portion of new, tailored services required by ECWM. To successfully integrate ECWM with PIEE, the original task order’s scope will be increased to include the following additional GEX services: Electronic Commerce (EC) software Integration, Messaging Services for secure and reliable communication, and Mediation Services for translating, transforming, and routing messages between systems and formats. The additional services are necessary to ensure the successful integration and sustainment of the PIEE Common Operating Environment (COE) integration with ECWM, in support of the Warfighter, DLA and Federal agencies and customers in the field.

4. IDENTIFICATION OF THE EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY AND

SUPPORTING RATIONALE, INCLUDING A DEMONSTRATION THAT THE NATURE

OF THE ACQUISITION REQUIRES USE OF THE EXCEPTION CITED:

In accordance with FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B), an exception to the fair opportunity process is justified because only one awardee is capable of providing the GEX services required at the level of quality required because the GEX services are unique and highly specialized. The GEX provides unique, specialized services to the entire DoD community and is a critical application for the Department. Peraton, the current GEX contractor, is the only contractor that currently has the capability to provide GEX skilled resources who can support the GEX services required by the Government. Awarding to another contractor with no GEX experience would lead to mission failure, causing a disruption in transactional flow across the Department.

GEX is utilized across all DoD agencies and is important in the total technical environment of the Government as it provides data translation and data routing capabilities across DoD, as well as to the Department of Homeland Security, Department of the Treasury, and the General Services Administration (GSA). The GEX infrastructure is a homogenous environment where the data translation and integration efforts run as part of the GEX infrastructure. All components of the GEX work in tandem as a single software solution, where the GEX coordinates the processing workflow across the numerous data translation maps. The data translation maps require data be provided by the GEX in order to translate the data properly and accurately. The tightly coupled design of the infrastructure allows the GEX to process extremely high data volumes in a very efficient manner. Due to the homogenous nature of the environment, the data translation and integration requirements can overlap with GEX core software changes. As a result, the Government has a need for Peraton, who is currently providing all other GEX services, to perform the data translation and integration requirements. To fulfill a customer requirement, there often has to be both a data translation map developed, and a GEX core update completed, which includes items like customized data reporting, data marts, data translation and validation routines that utilize the GEX core communication functionality. Both actions (data translation and GEX core software) must be worked via a single effort to ensure that the solution is consistently developed and delivered as a single, integrated solution. If the single developer, Peraton, is not used, then the data integration items would not work properly with the GEX core, resulting in an unusable environment and mission failure. This would result in software components that cannot be integrated together, the data integration maps would be unable to communicate with GEX software, and the audit trails within the GEX software would be broken with negative impact to system auditability. In order to overcome these issues, the Government would need to procure additional services to integrate disconnected services into a single solution, which would negate the benefits and efficiencies of having a single, integrated software solution. These types of issues would lead to an immediate, negative impact to the Warfighter when transactions stop flowing because solutions cannot be properly integrated together into a single system.

The GEX Core Task Order was competed under the JETS contract vehicle and awarded to Northrup Grumman. Northrup Grumman Corporation’s JETS contract was novated to Peraton on March 4, 2022. The use of another contractor would lead to mission failure given they do not currently have working knowledge of GEX source code and how to integrate data translation maps into the GEX software; such knowledge would require training from current GEX personnel and is necessary to effectively support the GEX environment.

GEX has been in production serving DoD systems for over 18 years and currently supports hundreds of unique Information Technology (IT) systems and over 38,000 specific data channels.

Awarding GEX task orders to a vendor other than Peraton would preclude delivery of these common services to the ecommerce community. Without this support, GEX customers would have to deal with degraded production support with unacceptable downtime. Maintaining this is integrally tied into the efforts to sustain and improve the GEX itself, and thus cannot be separately competed without substantial duplication of cost and disruption to operations. As discussed above, only Peraton has the necessary expertise to deliver these critical services.

5. A DETERMINATION BY THE CONTRACTING OFFICER THAT THE ANTICIPATED

COST TO THE GOVERNMENT WILL BE FAIR AND REASONABLE:

As the Contracting Officer, I hereby determine that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable. It is anticipated that the Government will use various price analysis techniques including, but not limited to: (1) Comparison of proposed prices to historical prices paid; (2) Comparison of proposed prices with independent Government cost estimates; and/or

(3) Comparison of proposed prices obtained through market research for the same or similar services.

6. ANY OTHER FACTS SUPPORTING THE JUSTIFICATION:

N/A

7. A STATEMENT OF THE ACTIONS, IF ANY, THE AGENCY MAY TAKE TO

REMOVE OR OVERCOME ANY BARRIERS THAT LED TO THE EXCEPTION TO

FAIR OPPORTUNITY BEFORE ANY SUBSEQUENT ACQUISITION FOR THE

SUPPLIES OR SERVICES IS MADE:

The GEX Core Task Order was issued as a competitive task order under JETS, but only one vendor, Northrop Grumman, submitted an offer and was therefore the only source capable of meeting the Government’s requirements at the time. Northrop Grumman’s JETS contract was novated to Peraton on DLA plans to compete the follow-on GEX requirement when the JETS GEX Core Task Order expired in November 2023. If another JETS vendor demonstrates their capability to support GEX requirements during the follow-on competition, DLA will award to the best value offeror. DLA will seek to award other GEX requirements competitively to the extent practicable and consistent with providing effective support to the GEX program.