JA Redacted.pdf

AutoDesk

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 award of a Firm-Fixed-Price delivery order issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for brand name AutoDesk software licenses, and maintenance support.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Information and Technology (OIT) has a requirement for brand name AutoDesk software licenses, and maintenance support (101 each Architecture Engineering & Construction Collection Government Multi-user Annual Subscriptions, 275 each AutoCAD - including specialized toolsets Government Multi-user Annual Subscriptions, and 4 each Product Design & Manufacturing Collection IC Government Multi-user Annual Subscriptions), and maintenance support. The software maintenance and support will consist of software upgrades, and updates, to include major releases, point releases, service releases and security releases of applicable software on a quarterly basis, or within 48 hours in cases where a high-risk vulnerability fix becomes available. These software upgrades and updates are necessary for VA to continue to operate successfully. The software subscription licenses and maintenance are required to ensure the software remains operational and all vulnerabilities in the software are mitigated. The period of performance is from November 1, 2024 to October 31, 2025. The total estimated price of the proposed action is

4. Statutory Authority: Pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.505(a)(4), the following brand name requirement is being justified and approved as an exception to fair opportunity under the statutory authority of Section 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(2) as implemented by 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: Based on market research, as described in Section 8 of this document, it was determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for the brand required. AutoDesk is a commercially available off-the-shelf software license package currently in use in VA.

AutoDesk brand name software is the only software that can continue to support VA’s existing infrastructure protocols, underlying source code and existing functionality to ensure continued operational availability. Additionally, only AutoDesk or a reseller can provide the necessary software maintenance and updates because of the propriety source code required to develop and implement software updates essential to the

AutoDesk existing proprietary Autodesk source code. No other source has the capability or compatibility necessary to provide the required software maintenance and support to meet VA’s functional requirements. No other brand software maintenance is compatible with, or interoperable with, the existing proprietary AutoDesk software database structures, protocols, and software application programming interfaces. Replacement would take a year or more and without the maintenance it would leave VA IOT at risk of breakdown of services. Based on the above, the brand name AutoDesk software maintenance and support is the only solution that can meet the Government’s requirement.

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 can meet the Government’s requirements. It was determined, however, that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for the brand name AutoDesk software licenses, and maintenance support. In accordance with FAR 16.505(a)(4)(iii)(A)(2), this justification will be provided with the Request for Quotation (RFQ) to all appropriate NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. Furthermore, in accordance with FAR 5.301, 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), and 16.505(a)(4)(iii), the award notice for this action will be synopsized on the Contract Opportunities website and this justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award.

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: The Government's technical experts conducted market research by reviewing similar software and software maintenance support services in July 2024, to ascertain if there were other software products or software maintenance services that could meet VA's requirements.

Specifically, the Government's technical experts conducted web-based research on software maintenance solutions product offerings such as TurboCAD and CADopia. As a result of the market research, the technical experts confirmed that as the source code underlying VA’s current Autodesk software implementation is proprietary to Autodesk.

Autodesk is the only source capable of providing the required software maintenance including required upgrades and updates to the Autodesk software. No other source has the capability of developing and issuing software updates and fixes for Autodesk software necessary to support the functional requirements stated in Section 5 of this justification.

VA technical experts frequently review industry trade periodicals and conduct online research to determine whether any other brand names of architectural software were currently available to meet this requirement. According to that research, since Autodesk software is integrated into VA’s architectural design and modeling framework already in place, VA technical experts concluded that VA can only utilize Autodesk software to add