III_F_Warwick Mills Sole Source Justification_Redacted.pdf

SOLE SOURCE JUSTIFICATION

Antiviral Face Masks for COVID-19 Protection

DESCRIPTION OF REQUIREMENT:

The Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Division Newport, the in response to the call to all Department of Defense employees to identify possible solution or manufacturing sources of possible solutions to the COVID-19 Health Crisis presently facing our Country reached out to vendors with whom they had worked with in the past. An area of Urgent need is for high performance antiviral masks. identified a potential source, Warwick Mills that could meet the

Governments requirement.

The Government’s requirement is to develop New mask designs, with prototype execution, equipment design, material filter design, and thermoformed mask and mask insert designs that will filter particles from 0.3 microns to 1 microns. The estimated cost of the R&D effort is with the goal of delivering two mask designs, prototype quantity of 10 each along with documentation on all design and manufacturing protocols.

SOLE SOURCE JUSTIFICATION:

The sole source justification for using Warwick Mills as a source is due to urgency and industrial mobilization needed for DoD’s active COVID-19 response. On 13 March 2020, President

Trump declared a National Emergency concerning the COVID-19 outbreak. Since that time local organizations, municipalities, states, and the Government have been looking at different approaches for meeting the needs of our essential employees as it relates to PPE. There is worldwide shortage of quality PPE, so an immediate need for better PPE exists. In partnership with the Army and ONR, Division Newport has an urgent need for high performance antiviral masks that can be developed, tested, and then manufactured to support our civilian, military, and

Government personnel.

Warwick Mills has been identified as a vertical manufacturer who can quickly design and produce an appropriate antiviral mask with materials at hand. Warwick has the background as a key research engineering company with extensive expertise working in biological hazards. They are uniquely positioned to research the materials, design and improve material processing with treatments to enhance particle capture. Warwick’s vertical manufacturing capabilities enable them to build and design equipment to thermoform the filter media into masks and filter inserts, and add straps to be able to be used as masks. Warwick has manpower, resources and equipment dedicated to meet current availability to support this effort given the critical timeline associated with the COVID-19 critical mask needs. Warwick has supported previous R&D efforts for both

Navy and Army, and is a known subject matter expert in biological hazards and PPE. Their PPE products are sold worldwide. Furthermore, Warwick has uniquely given up any proprietary rights to the research and is delivering process documentation and CAD drawings of both mask and manufacturing equipment with the explicit goal to share the knowledge with other manufacturers to produce similar capability to deliver 30,000 masks per week.

Due to the specialty area, only a limited market survey was conducted based on Subject Matter

Expert background. Discussions were held with Federal Fabrics Fibers (3F) Inc. and Warwick.

Warwick has significant unique specific capabilities to address this urgent need including: they are Subject Matter Experts on particle capture relevant to improve mask performance, they have working particle-testing equipment which is a niche limited specialty test area, they have the know-how to perform testing, know-how on treatment of textiles and expertise in adjusting substrates to increase performance, have needed equipment that can be converted to molders for thermoforming, has needed air plasma treat equipment, has the expertise to adjust processing method to improve performance, has working staff that is knowledgeable and experienced in all of these areas.

Additionally, Warwick has internally invested and started the development of their unique technique. Warwick has already agreed to not retain any proprietary knowledge in this mask formation and has a goal to deliver documentation of process and drawings of mask formation to any requestor to increase US capacity.

Requiring Department:

Based on the above, I recommend this acquisition be conducted on a Sole Source/Brand Name

Specification basis. I certify the technical data which form the basis of this justification are complete and accurate.

APPROVAL:

Contracting Officer:

Based on the above, I have determined that the circumstances of the contract action deem only one source reasonably available/only this brand can fulfill the requirements. I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.