JA - Lumen NLEC Bridge. Redacted.pdf

Lumen Technologies Government Solutions, Inc., NLEC Bridge Extension Control Number VA-21-00068347

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: This proposed action is for the issuance of a five-month extension to firm-fixed-price (FF)Task Order (TO) number 36C10B21N0002CENT issued under the National Local Exchange Carrier (NLEC) Next Generation (NG) Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity Contract (IDIQ) Contract 36C10B20D0030 with Lumen Technologies Government Solutions, Inc, located at 4250 N Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203 for Local Exchange Carrier (LEC) telecommunication data and voice services on a sole source basis.

3. Description of Supplies or Services: The VA Office of Information and Technology (OI&T) Telecommunications Provisioning Office (TPO) office has a requirement for the uninterrupted continuation of LEC voice and data telecommunications services (e.g. Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) lines, Primary Rate Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) lines, Direct Inward Dialing/ Direct Outward Dialing (DID/DOD) lines, Metro Ethernet services, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)) and features for existing LEC services deployed to 627 Service Delivery Points (SDPs) at VA facilities throughout the contiguous 48 United States. These services are currently being provided for on TO 36C10B20D0029 36C10B21N0002CENT, which is set to expire August 31, 2021. The period of performance for this proposed action is five-months, with a total estimated value of

4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting an exception to fair opportunity is Section 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(2) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B), entitled “Only one awardee is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services ordered are unique or highly specialized.”

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: Lumen Technologies Government Solutions, Inc. is the current provider of services for the 627 SDPs included within this requirement and therefore only Lumen Technology is capable of providing the seamless continuity of NLEC data and voice services within VA’s required timeframe.

VA awarded six NLEC-NG IDIQ base contracts on September 29, 2020. There are eight competitive TO’s under this vehicle that will assume the LEC footprint and provide continued voice and data telecommunications services for the SDPs across the enterprise.

To date, VA has awarded three competitive TOs and it is anticipated that the remaining five competitive TOs will be awarded prior to September 30, 2021.

Specifically, VA has issued solicitations for three of the five competitive TO and proposals are due in September 2021. The remaining two solicitations will be solicited imminently, with proposals also due in September 2021. Given the anticipated award schedule of the remaining five competitive TOs, and the updated transition-in times required by incoming awardees for complete circuit turn-on, the five-month Period of Performance of this bridge contract is required to ensure continuity of critical telecommunications circuitry.

During the solicitation phase in which the competitive solicitations were released to industry, vendors submitted questions relative to the Government’s published requirements as well as notified the Government that the requirements as written, could not be fully provided in accordance with the Governments basis of Award. Specifically, vendor feedback caused VA to revisit its technical requirements and changes were made to the competitive TO requirements, accordingly, to ensure maximum competition. Additionally, VA further updated requirements to perform a final validation of SDP addresses and location names, as well as corroborate the data provided by industry in response to the solicitations, to ensure each vendor could accurately and completely respond to the requirements. Though there was a large data set that needed to be manually verified for accuracy, this exercise was time consuming, but necessary to ensure fair opportunity competition. This delay caused at least a 30-day delay to when VA had anticipated awarding the competitive TOs.

For instance, all the competitive TOs required a transition-in period for any awardee, even an incumbent. These transitions are classified as soft transitions or full transitions.

VA defines soft transitions as a combination of administrative documentation using the existing service offering and/or a “hot cut” of services to the new vendor. Full transitions would include performing site surveys to determine if transitioning an SDP has limitations such as cabling and outside plant capacity, and potential environmental and weather conditions. Site Surveys include technicians deploying to each SDP to inventory existing outdoor technology, indoor cable paths, conduit capacities and telecommunications room readiness. Once these preparation services are completed, the vendor must then execute upon the planning activities outlined above to include the potential physical tasks of converting each SDP to its network. Additionally, the awardee must also act as the agent for the VA to obtain the telephone numbers from the incumbent, which based on historical experience during the life of the legacy NLEC TOs, could take upwards of a month, depending on the willingness to cooperate of the incumbent contractor. Originally, VA had anticipated that these transitions would occur within a three-month period.

VA’s recent experiences with transitioning services from legacy NLEC TOs to competitively awarded NLEC-NG TOs has highlighted the significant complexity and difficulty that industry and VA experience when transitioning services. Specifically, local VA facility OI&T personnel must be available to coordinate and support site-visits, vendor access to secure facilities, during a pandemic, needs to be arranged, and Customer Service Records need to be produced by the incumbent provider and timely provided to the incoming provider. Any delay in these complex processes, results in failure to transition in on schedule. Moreover, due to the criticality of the medical center’s telecom circuitry, the incoming service provider is required to thoroughly test the new circuitry before the old circuitry can be turned off. As this transition-in effort includes preparation, categorization, and prioritization for services to be transitioned, and determination of whether these can be handled as “soft transitions” or require additional support, as well as exaction of the transfer of services VA has identified that three months has proven an insufficient amount of time to complete these critical tasks.

Because of the magnitude of the potential effort to accomplish these tasks for the 627 SDPs included within this requirement, VA anticipates that the aforementioned activities would take a minimum of four months. This estimate is based on transition-in of similar sized efforts and recent transition efforts of NLEC-NG TO’s.

As such, without extending this bridge effort to maintain the existing LEC services, VA telecommunications would be unable to properly function. Additionally, telecommunication lines would fall off contract, and critical circuits would no longer be able to be maintained. If bills are not paid timely, due to these telecommunication lines falling off contract, disconnects may occur. Telecommunication lines falling off contract would significantly increase risk to VA. The ability for the Veteran population to call their providers to schedule appointments, check on medications, participate in scheduled Telehealth appointments, and receive COVID-19 vaccines would be, at minimum, severely hampered. It is likely, however, that Veterans would be cut off from care completely which would produce catastrophic effects and potentially death. The only avenue to avoid these risks is through this bridge effort extension to maintain the existing LEC services in place.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government’s requirements within the timelines described in section five. There is no competition anticipated for this specific bridge requirement. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), the award notice for this action will be synopsized on Contract Opportunities and the justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The NLEC NG IDIQ contract has been competitively awarded and VA will imminently be competing and awarding TO efforts under the NLEC-NG vehicle to support the forward-looking requirements. This sole source effort will continue to act as a bridge between the expired legacy NLEC TOs and the new anticipated NLEC-NG TO awards. As services are transitioned to the potential new vendor, those services will be descoped from this effort.

8. Market Research: The Government’s technical experts conducted market research in January 2021. Specifically, the technical experts reviewed the technical requirements and implementation timelines and other vendors who provide similar LEC services. Though other vendors provide similar services, as noted in section five of this document, no source other than the incumbent can provide the seamless and continued LEC services required to bridge the gap between the expired legacy NLEC TOs and the new anticipated NLEC-NG TO awards.

9. Other Facts: None