JA EOC 2026 Redacted.pdf

PL Rounding SW and Maintenance Control Number VA-26-00001695

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics

Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724

2. Description of Action: The proposed action is for a firm-fixed price task order to be issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government-wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for the procurement of brand name Performance Logic (PL) Rounding software licenses, maintenance and technical support.

3. Description of Supplies or Services: The proposed action is to renew 3,920 brand name PL Rounding software licenses, as well as PL Rounding software maintenance and technical support for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).

VA requires software licenses which allows for the continuation of routine Environment of Care (EOC) rounds, Annual Workplace Evaluations (AWE), Police Program Inspection Compliance (PPIC) rounds and Sterile Processing (SPS) rounds. This allows VA to manage the EOC AWE, PPIC, and SPS compliance as it relates to patient care activities, capturing deficiency data in real-time and generating time-sensitive corrective actions to identify potential patient safety risks and EOC deficiencies. VHA’s Physical Security Specialists are expected to conduct annual rounds of each facility using a pre-determined checklist that highlights potential deficiencies and safety concerns. Prior to implementation of the current platform, the ways in which these EOC Rounds and responses to compliance inquiries were handled varied significantly from site-to-site. This process was not streamlined to create consistency within the medical centers and data analysis was not possible at any level higher than the facility level.

AWE inspections must be completed within their annual time frame (every 9 to 15 months), and absence of this oversight and inspection process will put the agency at extreme compliance risk with external regulatory agencies such as Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Office of the Inspector General, and the Office of the Medical Inspector. To continue to serve at the highest level of care for Veterans and ensure that VHA will be able to maintain compliance with VHA Directive 1608 (mandating VHA healthcare facilities have a means to track corrective actions to maintain regulatory compliance and ensure patient safety) without a break in service, VHA must continue with the AWE functionality that currently exists within the PL Rounding software. In addition, the PL Contractor provides Operations and Maintenance support activities which includes correcting production software defects with the goal of increasing efficiency and reliability on a continuous basis and deploying patches/upgrades as needed. The PL software platform solution deployed monthly patches during the current period of performance ensuring users did not experience any downtime due to changes in security requirements.

to document the identification and correction of non-compliant conditions. By continuing to provide software products for the documentation of audits and inspections, healthcare facilities have a means to track corrective actions to maintain regulatory compliance enterprise wide.

To switch platforms, VA would incur substantial expenses for configuration of a new platform, to include implementation and training of the new application, and additional infrastructure support to maintain the platform within the VA Enterprise Cloud. In addition, the VHA would also need to allocate substantial internal resources to manage and implement a new platform. Configuration and implementation will require a significant level of effort to include working directly with a new vendor to implement the new platform. Additional effort would also be expended to develop the VHA specific reporting requirements to meet congressional oversight requirements. VA expects these costs to exceed $1M given the current VHA requirements, and this is based on previous acquisition history. Implementation of a new platform will also require significant training and implementation support for the VHA. During initial implementation, on-site training and configuration work was required at each facility. Training and implementation of the platform took 18 months. If a new solution is implemented, the VHA will need to repeat the onsite training at every facility as well as undergo a significant transition period for full implementation. During this transition period, users and data would be migrated from the current application to the new application. The data migration effort would need to include data cleansing and mapping to ensure that the data could be accurately viewed and stored in the new application. Integrations that currently exist, such as with the VA’s Commercial Data Warehouse (CDW) would need to be established with the new application. In addition to platform training, mobile device training would need to occur. This work would be part of the 18-month transition, noted above.

Moreso, the VHA will also need to work directly with Office of Information and Technology (OIT) to stand up the new platform within the Enterprise Cloud. The current platform already meets all standards and has the current Authority to Operate (ATO). There are no assurances that a new application can meet current ATO standards without additional expenses and effort from the OIT.

PL Rounding Software is the only software that meets VA's unique technical and functional requirements, which include assigning and tracking action plans separate from deficiency close-out; transferring deficiencies between responsible parties via platform and web forms; capturing and tracking the attendance of inspectors on rounds based on individual inspector as well as across a service; designating primary and alternate inspectors for each service; having the attendance module available on both mobile and desktop applications; the EOC tablet application operating when not connected to a network; ability to review, edit and re-categorize deficiencies and supporting information prior to routing for close-out; easily modifying/adding and updating checklists with local VHA site questions/checklists without impacting overall national VA checklist questions; support VA user authentication, single sign-on and account manager functions through VA Active Directory; and hosting in the VA enterprise cloud.

Additionally, only PL or an authorized reseller can provide the necessary software maintenance because of the proprietary source code required to develop and implement software updates, patches and fixes. PL currently maintains the proprietary rights to the algorithms needed to enhance and upgrade the current AWE platform, has developed source code that is unique to PL, and is currently utilized in the AWE inspections process. Due to this, PL and its resellers are the only ones who can complete the EOC maintenance and technical support. The source code allows VA to immediately obtain real-time AWE data from all work sites, record deficiencies found during worksite AWEs, compare to current EOC findings, and track the closing-out of all findings. PL designed and implemented workflow algorithms that are interoperable with VA systems for provisioning of individual VA users, communicating directly with the end users for discrepancy/findings follow-up, and producing the types of reports needed to meet the requirements of the AWE platform. PL also designed and owns the proprietary rights for workflows associated with both deficiency reminders and escalation of open issues. It is the only vendor that can meet the unique requirements of the AWE platform.

VA will lose a system that is used and implemented across 152 facilities and provides the functionality, configuration options, and established training practices that enable the system to be successful.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in Section 8 of this justification. This effort did not yield any additional sources that could meet the Government's requirements. However, the undersigned VA technical representative determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for brand name licenses, as well as software maintenance and support. In accordance with FAR 6.302-1(c)(1)(ii)(c) and 5.102(a)(6) this justification shall be posted with the solicitation. Furthermore, the proposed action will be synopsized on the Contracting Opportunities Page in accordance with FAR 5.201.

Any proposals that are received shall be evaluated.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: Market research was conducted in September 2025 by a panel of Government technical experts on similar solutions. Specifically, the technical experts reviewed various vendor product websites, which provided detailed product capabilities, The vendors that were included in the research were: Press Ganey, Joint Commission AMP, Walsh Integrated, Readiness Rounds, Smart Facility Software, Salesforce, AuditPro, and ATG.

While the eight vendors, listed above, did meet some of the VA requirements, the eight vendors, did not meet other required VA required functionality, including the ability to assign and track action plans separately from deficiency close-out, develop findings and assign and track multiple deficiencies to same findings, transfer deficiencies between responsible parties via platform and web forms, designate primary and alternate inspectors for each service, organize facility data between VISNs without impacting performance metrics, and maintain role-specific user-based access rights across multiple products and round configurations.

Based on reviews of these products, the Government’s technical experts determined that none of these products can meet all of VA’s functional requirements or be altered to meet all of VA’s functional requirements. Additionally, any other source would need access to the proprietary PL Software code to provide the software maintenance support.

Additional research was conducted in November 2025 by the Contract Specialist using the NASA SEWP V GWAC Provider Lookup Tool. It was determined that there are multiple Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) authorized resellers of PL Rounding Software on the NASA SEWP V GWAC. Therefore, limited competition is expected for this proposed action on NASA SEWP V GWAC.

9. Other Facts: None