FOA-DLA-201801 Option.pdf

FUNDING OPPORTUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT

SOLICITATION FOR COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT APPLICATIONS

SUMMARY OF FUNDING OPPORTUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT

Federal Awarding Agency

Defense Logistics Agency Office of Small Business Programs 8725 John J. Kingman Road, Suite 1127 Fort Belvoir, VA 22060-6221 PTAP@dla.mil

Funding Opportunity Title Procurement Technical Assistance Program –Option Period

Announcement Type Initial

Funding Opportunity Number (www.grants.gov)

DLA-201801

Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) Number and Title CFDA 12.002 - Procurement Technical Assistance for Business Firms

Key Dates Refer to paragraph D.4 of this announcement.

Section A. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

1. Authority. This program is authorized by Title 10 United States Code, Chapter 142, “Procurement Technical Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program”.

2. Funding instrument. Awards resulting from this announcement will be cost sharing cooperative agreements.

3. Regulations. Cooperative agreements resulting from this announcement will be governed by the regulations published in Chapter I, Subchapter C of Title 32, Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) and in Chapter XI of Title 2, CFR, which are referred to collectively as the DoD Grant and Agreement Regulations (DoDGARs).

4. PTAP General Terms and Conditions. The general terms and conditions that will apply to cooperative agreements resulting from this announcement are posted at www.dla.mil/HQ/SmallBusiness/PTAP/SCAA.aspx. These terms and conditions are referred to as the “PTAP General Terms and Conditions”. PTAP General Terms and Conditions, Version 1.1, applies to this announcement.

5. Background and purpose of cooperative agreements. The Procurement Technical

Assistance Program (PTAP) was established by section 1241 of the Department of Defense (DoD) Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1985 (Public Law 98-525) in an effort to expand the number of businesses capable of participating in government contracts. Under this announcement, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) will award cooperative agreements to eligible program participants who will establish or maintain Procurement Technical Assistance http://www.grants.gov/ http://www.dla.mil/HQ/SmallBusiness/PTAP/SCAA.aspx

Funding Opportunity Number Page 2 of 9 DLA-201801 Option Period

Centers (PTACs). The PTACs serve as a resource for businesses to obtain information and training related to contracting opportunities with DoD, other federal agencies, state and local governments and with government prime contractors. Procurement professionals at the PTACs provide critical assistance to businesses seeking to participate in government contracts and most of the assistance they provide is free.

The PTACs make a concerted effort to seek out and assist small business concerns, small disadvantaged businesses concerns, women-owned small businesses concerns, HUBZone small business concerns, service-disabled veteran-owned small business concerns, historically black colleges or universities and Minority Institutions.

Refer to the PTAP General Terms and Conditions. Pay special attention to the “Program Requirements” part and the “Performance management, monitoring, and reporting” article because they provide important details about the work you are required to do, should you receive an award.

Section B. AWARD INFORMATION

1. Anticipated awards. We expect to award cost sharing cooperative agreements as a result of this announcement, however, we are not obligated to make any awards and reserve the right to revise or cancel this announcement. This opportunity is limited to previous cooperative agreement recipients (i.e., existing PTACs currently performing a base year).

2. Cooperative agreements. Cooperative agreements differ from grants in that substantial involvement is expected between the recipient and the Federal agency when carrying out the award. Should you receive an award, we expect you to collaborate with DoD and other Federal agencies to accomplish the work set out in the PTAP General Terms and Conditions.

3. Funding period. Existing PTACs (i.e., you are a recipient currently performing a cooperative agreement with DLA) should propose a one-year period of performance that starts immediately following the end of your current cooperative agreement base period.

Section C. ELIGIBILITY INFORMATION

1. Eligible applicants. Only existing PTACs are eligible to apply.

2. Cost sharing or matching.

a. Cost sharing requirements. All awards we make as a result of this announcement require you to provide cost sharing, without which your application is ineligible for an award.

Allowable contributions towards cost sharing requirements are discussed in the “Financial and Program Management” part of the PTAP General Terms and Conditions. Refer to the application instructions in paragraph D.2 of this announcement and note that you are required to submit documentation with your application to verify that you have the

Funding Opportunity Number Page 3 of 9 necessary commitments to meet cost sharing requirements and, if applicable, that your proposed service area is a distressed area.

b. Cost share ratio. Our share of cost is limited to no more than one-half unless you provide procurement technical assistance in a distressed area, in which case our share is limited to no more than three-fourths. You are required to share the cost of operating your PTAC and match our funds accordingly.

c. Distressed area. Distressed area means an area of local government (i.e., usually a city or county) that has a per capita income of 80 percent or less of that State’s average or an unemployment rate that is one percent greater than the national average for the most recent 24-month period for which statistics are available. In addition, those areas described in paragraphs D.7.c & d of this announcement are distressed areas.

Section D. APPLICATION AND SUBMISSION INFORMATION

1. Address to request application package. Application forms and other materials needed to apply are available for download on the internet at the websites in paragraph D.2 below.

2. Content and form of application submission. You may find, download and submit the application package at grants.gov by searching for the funding opportunity number. Instructions for completing your application are posted along with the opportunity at grants.gov and at www.dla.mil/HQ/SmallBusiness/PTAP/SCAA.aspx. Your application must be for a one-year period only.

3. Unique entity identifier and System for Award Management (SAM). Unless you are exempted from this requirement in accordance with 2 CFR 25.110, you must (1) be registered in SAM before submitting your application; (2) provide a valid unique entity identifier in your application (currently your DUNS number); and (3) continue to maintain an active SAM registration with current information at all times during which you have an active Federal award or an application or plan under consideration by a Federal agency. We may not make an award to you until you have complied with all applicable unique entity identifier and SAM requirements and, if you have not fully complied with the requirements by the time we are ready to make an award, we may determine that you are not qualified to receive the award and use that determination as a basis for making an award to another applicant.

4. Submission dates and times. We will provide an application due date directly to you.

Usually, you will receive such notice about 180 days prior to the date that your current cooperative agreement will end and the due date for your application will be set about 120 days prior to your current end date. The application instructions in paragraph D.2 of this announcement apply.

a. Other application information.

i. When a due date falls on a Saturday, Sunday, Federal holiday, or any other day when we are closed, the due date is extended until our following business day.

ii. You must submit your application at grants.gov before it is due. We strongly http://www.grants.gov/ http://grants.gov/ http://www.dla.mil/HQ/SmallBusiness/PTAP/SCAA.aspx

Funding Opportunity Number Page 4 of 9 recommend that you DO NOT wait until the application due date to begin the application process because of the time involved to complete the process and errors that could occur at grants.gov, which might require you to correct and resubmit your application.

You are encouraged to submit your application at least 15 days prior to the due date.

iii. We will use the date and time stamp provided by grants.gov to determine whether your application is timely or not.

iv. If you request it, we may authorize you to mail a paper copy of the application instead of using grants.gov.

v. Any application that we receive after the exact time we specify for receipt is late and will not be considered unless we determine that accepting it would not unduly delay an award and that the late application would not displace another, timely application.

vi. If you have any questions about the application process you may contact us at the address or email on page one.

5. Certifications and assurances. Your application includes the SF 424, “Application for

Federal Assistance”. By signing the SF 424 (refer to its block 21) you are providing:

a. Your certification that you are an eligible applicant, as described in paragraph C.1 of this announcement;

b. Your assurance to comply with the “National Policy Requirements” part of the PTAP General Terms and Conditions; and

c. The certification regarding lobbying at Appendix A to 32 CFR Part 28.

6. Intergovernmental review. This opportunity is subject to Executive Order 12372, “Intergovernmental Review of Federal Programs.” You are reminded that you may have to contact your state's Single Point of Contact (SPOC) to find out about and comply with your state's process under Executive Order 12372. The names and addresses of SPOCs are listed at whitehouse.gov/omb/grants_spoc.

7. Funding limitations. This is the first option period of a three-year funding opportunity, which will usually consist of a one-year base period and two subsequent, one-year option periods.

The Federal funding limitations shown below apply separately to each of these three, one-year periods. This means that recipients have the potential to receive Federal funds up to the amounts below for each of three years. Funding is also contingent on your ability to meet the program’s cost sharing requirements, which are described in paragraph C.2 of this announcement. For example, in the case of a PTAC described in subparagraph 7.a below, the Federal share of cost could be as much as $600,000. Since we generally (i.e., except as described in paragraph C.2.b) will pay no more than one-half of the total cost, this means your proposed budget in this case would be $1.2M and we would each pay half.

a. $600,000 in the case of an entity that operates a PTAC providing statewide coverage.

Statewide coverage means a PTAC that provides procurement technical assistance in at least one-half of a state’s counties or equivalent coverage (e.g., parishes, boroughs, etc) and serves at least three-fourths of the state’s labor force;

b. $300,000 in the case of an entity that operates a PTAC providing less than statewide coverage;

c. $600,000 in the case of an entity that operates a PTAC wholly within more than one service http://www.grants.gov/ http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/grants_spoc

Funding Opportunity Number Page 5 of 9 area of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). This means a PTAC that provides procurement technical assistance to all of the federally recognized Indian tribes or Alaska Native entities in one of the BIA regions and at least half of the tribes or Alaska Native entities in a second BIA region; or

d. $150,000 in the case of an entity that operates a PTAC wholly within one service area of the BIA. This means a PTAC that provides procurement technical assistance to federally recognized Indian tribes and/or Alaska Native entities, but does not meet the standard in subparagraph 7.c above.

Section E. APPLICATION REVIEW INFORMATION

When used in this section, the term “Program Requirements” means the requirements in the “Program Requirements” part of the PTAP General Terms and Conditions.

1. Criteria.

a. Evaluation factors. We will use the factors and subfactors below to evaluate your application. We will make awards to the applicants whose applications we determine to be the best value, cost and other factors considered. The factors past performance, technical capability and management are of equal importance and each are more important than cost. Within technical capability and management, each subfactor is of equal importance.

i. Past performance.

ii. Technical capability.

1) Personnel.

2) Facilities.

iii. Management.

1) Technical understanding.

2) Program management.

3) Cost sharing contributions.

iv. Cost.

b. Description of evaluation factors.

i. Past performance. We will evaluate your past performance to determine how relevant recent work you accomplished is to the work required by Program Requirements and the degree to which you satisfied your previous customers. You are responsible for identifying recent and relevant work you accomplished and for providing references so that we may obtain information regarding customer satisfaction.

We may also consider past performance information that we obtain from sources other than you, including Federal, State, and local government agencies, Better Business Bureaus, published media and electronic databases. The lack of recent and relevant past performance information will result in our assignment of a neutral rating (i.e. neither favorable nor unfavorable) for this factor.

http://www.indianaffairs.gov/

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Pursuant to 10 U.S.C. 2413(d), we will give significant weight to past performance of entities operating PTACs established by this program and will consider successful past performance under cooperative agreements with us to be more meritorious than other, comparable past performance. More meritorious past performance includes that of two or more PTACs that combine and apply as a single entity, even if the resulting entity is new; however, it does not include the past performance of subrecipients or other sub elements/organizations of a PTAC that breakaway and apply separately.

ii. Technical capability.

1) Personnel. We will evaluate your application to ascertain the degree to which your proposed personnel meet Program Requirements. Our evaluation will consider qualifications, including relevant experience and education, as well as the availability of the proposed personnel.

2) Facilities. We will evaluate your application to ascertain the degree to which the facilities you propose meet Program Requirements. We will also consider the availability of your facilities.

iii. Management.

1) Technical understanding. We will evaluate your understanding of Program

Requirements. We will not consider a simple statement of understanding or playback of Program Requirements to demonstrate your understanding.

We will evaluate the soundness of your approach to implementing a program pursuant to Program Requirements. In addition, your application must demonstrate credibility, realism, and logic in providing procurement technical assistance to businesses and the required deliverables to us under a cooperative agreement.

2) Program management. We will evaluate how you intend to manage and coordinate the effort under a cooperative agreement, including planning, assigning responsibility, controlling personnel, controlling utilization of resources, tracking deliverables, monitoring performance and obtaining feedback from your clients. Our evaluation will also consider your proposed performance goals, your procedures for monitoring and controlling costs; your procedures for identifying problems, resolving them and ensuring that they do not reoccur; any proposed subrecipients and/or subcontractors and the degree to which you will use them; and your Program Implementation Plan, if applicable.

3) Cost sharing contributions. We will evaluate the nature and type of commitments you propose to satisfy cooperative agreement cost sharing requirements. We will consider the degree to which your commitments will contribute to the success of

Funding Opportunity Number Page 7 of 9 your proposed program, the significance of the commitments that you have made and whether those commitments demonstrate that you have taken a meaningful interest in the success of your proposed program.

iv. Cost. We will consider the proposed cost to us for the base period in conjunction with the other non-cost factors to determine best value. If your proposed costs appear unrealistic, you are cautioned that we may infer a lack of understanding of Program Requirements, increased risk of performance or lack of credibility on your part.

2. Review and selection process.

a. Review of applications. We will review applications conforming to this announcement in accordance with the procedures in this section. We may provide you the opportunity to cure a deficiency resulting from an irregularity in your application or may waive the deficiency. We reserve the right to request any additional information we need to evaluate your application and your failure to provide the information in the time frame requested may result in us rejecting your application.

b. Duplicate coverage. Duplicate coverage of service areas exists when the proposed service areas of two or more applicants overlap. We will make a determination on a case-by-case basis as to the acceptability of duplicate coverage.

c. Selection process. We contemplate that we will make multiple awards; however, we may not make awards to all acceptable applicants. We will make award decisions to optimize the use of program funds while at the same time maximizing the availability of procurement technical assistance. We will make funding decisions on an agreement-by-agreement basis and in the best interest of the overall program. In making selections among otherwise acceptable applicants, we will generally give funding priority to those applicants that are operating established PTACs and have a successful performance record (refer to 10 U.S.C. 2413(d)).

d. Other pre-award procedures. On a case-by-case basis, we may request a pre-award credit report, audit, survey or other review to determine if you meet the standards in 32 CFR 22.415. We may delay an award decision until all necessary reviews are complete.

Based on the results of a review, we may decide not to make an award, make an award subject to additional conditions or may delay an award until after you resolve any deficiencies identified.

3. Recipient Integrity and performance.

a. Prior to making an award with a total amount of Federal share greater than the simplified acquisition threshold (currently $150K), we are required to review and consider any information about you that is in the OMB-designated integrity and performance system.

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Currently, the OMB-designated system is the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS) (see 41 U.S.C. 2313);

b. You, at your option, may review information in FAPIIS (or successor OMB-designated system) and comment on any information about you that a Federal awarding agency previously entered and is currently in the system; and

c. We will consider any comments by you, in addition to the other information in FAPIIS (or successor OMB-designated system), in making a judgment about your integrity, business ethics, and record of performance under Federal awards when completing the review of risk as described in 2 CFR 200.205 “Federal awarding agency review of risk posed by applicants.”

Section F. FEDERAL AWARD ADMINISTRATION INFORMATION

1. Award notices. Awards resulting from this announcement will be bilateral (i.e., we both sign) cooperative agreements.

2. Administrative and national policy requirements. Refer to the “National Policy Requirements” part of the PTAP General Terms and Conditions for national policy requirements that will apply to awards. Among others, these requirements include disclosures by you required in Subpart C of 2 CFR Part 180, as adopted by DoD at 2 CFR Part 1125.

3. Reporting. Refer to the “Financial, Programmatic, And Property Reporting” part and the “Submitting and maintaining recipient information” article in the PTAP General Terms and Conditions for reporting requirements that will apply to awards. Refer to paragraph F.2 above for disclosures that also apply.

Section G. OPTION TO EXTEND THE TERM OF THE AWARD

1. Duration. This is the first option period following the base period and is usually one year.

Awards may be eligible to be extended for another subsequent, one-year option period, however, we have no obligation to exercise options and may decide not to exercise one or both of them. Among other things, options are contingent on the continuation of enabling legislation for this program, the availability of funds and your compliance with award terms and conditions and performance during prior periods. We may exercise an option by modifying a previous award or by making a new award. Either case requires both us and you to sign a supplemental agreement.

2. Notice. Should you receive an option period award, we will give you preliminary written notice of whether or not we intend to exercise the final option. The notice will also establish a due date for your option period application and will outline any applicable funding limitations. We will normally provide such notice about 180 days before your current cooperative agreement expires.

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Section H. AGENCY CONTACTS

If you have any questions about this announcement you may contact us at the address or email on page one. Help using grants.gov is available at grants.gov/web/grants/support.html http://grants.gov/ http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/support.html