LimitedSourcesJustification_ID04190127_Rev 4 28Feb2020 Redacted-post.pdf

Limited Sources Justification (LSJ)

In Accordance with FAR 8.405-6(a)(1)(i)(B)

General Services Administration

Federal Acquisition Service

Southeast Sunbelt Region

1. Requiring and Contracting Activity

a. Requiring Activity: United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM)

HQ USSOCOM/SOF AT&L-SRSE

USSOCOM/SOF AT&L -KS

7701 Tampa Point Blvd MacDill AFB, FL 33621

b. Contracting Activity: General Services Administration Federal Acquisition Service Assisted Acquisition Service Division 77 Forsyth St, SW Atlanta, GA 30303

c. Contracting Officer: Matthew F Wright

d. Task ID: ID04190127

e. Estimated Value: $13,259,988.14

f. Contract Vehicle: Professional Services Schedule, 00CORP

g. Period of Performance: April 13, 2020 – April 12, 2021 (estimated)

h. Options: Not Applicable

2. Nature and Description of the Action Being Approved

This sole source contracting action is pursuing a waiver from placing a firm-fixed price task order on a competitive basis pursuant to FAR 8.405-2(c)(3) for the completion of 12 research and development projects for USSOCCOM in accordance with FAR 8.405-6(a)(l)(i)(B), which states that "Only one source is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services are unique or highly specialized." The proposed contractual action will be awarded under the General Services Administration (GSA) Professional Services Schedule (PSS)(OOCORP) to Cambridge International Systems, Inc.

(CAGE: 1P0S1), 2300 Clarendon Blvd, Ste. 705 Arlington, VA 22201-3394, The period of performance for this effort will be for a 12 month period. Funding will by FY19/20 RDT&E funds and the estimated price is $13,259,988.14. Adequate funding has been received (3 MIPRs).

3. Description of Supplies or Services:

United States Special Operations Command’s (USSOCOM) Program Executive Office for

Fixed Wing (PEO-FW) delivers Special Operations (SO)-peculiar manned and unmanned fixed wing airpower capabilities to effectively enable Special Operations Forces (SOF).

PEO-FW partners with the Warfighter and various development and support organizations to synchronize acquisition activities to field an array of advanced technology sensors, defensive countermeasures, advanced avionics, and mission training systems. This partnership ensures SOF fixed wing aircraft can accomplish its missions in expected threat environments and address supportability challenges of an aging legacy fleet. Various manned and unmanned systems deliver real-time worldwide aerial Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) of the battlefield for the individual Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine, and Task Force Commander through systems such as the Mid-Endurance Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and MQ-9. The low-density, high-demand nature of the SOF fixed wing fleet is a key driver in the acquisition approaches used to continue to improve and sustain the force. The high operational tempo of these aircraft requires innovative means to incorporate capability and sustainment improvements while ensuring adequate aircraft availability.

Execution specifically focuses on engineering activities, including but not limited to:

architecture, design, development, integration, testing, training, security, and support services. The focus is the deliberate planning, analyzing, organizing, and integrating of current and emerging operational and system capabilities to achieve desired warfighting mission effects, which includes mission analysis, designing or adapting systems and architectures to meet mission outcomes, and analysis and assessments. The Contractor shall provide services as outlined in the task order and in accordance with the Performance Work Statement and other directives as referenced or included.

This task order will require the contractor to provide all personnel, management, supervision, equipment, transportation, tools, supplies, and materials for the completion of 12 specific projects, listed in Table 1, that were not completed at the time that the Department of Health And Human Services (DHHS) unexpectedly ended performance of the prior task order.

TABLE 1 - USSOCOM Projects To Be Completed

CLIN/TASK

ORDER

NUMBER

PROJECT NAME

ESTIMATED PERIOD

OF PERFORMANCE

0001 Differential Segmented Aperture (DSA) 6 months

0002 Expeditionary Organic Tactical Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Capability Set (EOTACS)

- Common Ground Control Station (E-CGCS)

12 months

0003 Group 3 Unmanned Airborne Systems UAS Design: (Project 117)

10 months

0004 Group 2/Scan Eagle UAS BLOS – Thuraya Satellite Network

8 months

0005 Laser Marker – Integration into SkyRaider 6 months

0006 Myakka Range 6 months

0007 Standardized Payload/Platform Interface (Mod Payload BD, QRC, and G3)

0007AA Modular Payload BD 6 months

0007AB Modular Payload QRC 8 months

0007AC Modular Payload G3 6 months

0008 WiFi Survey Geo-Location Cyber Injection (Peebles, PQuad, Moonleash)

0008AA Wi-Fi Survey/Geo-location Cyber Inject: Payload (Peebles) 6 months

0008AB Wi-Fi Survey/Geo-location Cyber Inject: Payload on a Quad (PQuad)

6 months

0008AC Wi-Fi Survey/Geo-location Cyber Inject: Detachable Tether (Moonleash)

6 months

0009 ALTAVIAN Group 1 SUAS 9 months

0010 Modular Payload – Stalker 6 months

0011 Modular Payload Group 2 UAS (MQ-27B) 8 months

0012 Modular Payload Group 3 UAS (RQ-21) 9 months

4. Authority:

The authority for this action is FAR Subpart 8.405-6(a)(1)(i)(B), “Only one source is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services are unique or highly specialized.”

5. Supporting Rationale

The 12 projects listed in Table 1 were part of a larger ongoing USSOCOM effort under the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) NAITACS IDIQ Contract. Task Order HHSP233201700143W was competitively awarded to provide contractor service for the full system life cycle of engineering, detailed technical analysis, and systems acquisition requirements for Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Combat Systems (C5), Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR). Information Operations (IO); and Enterprise Information Services (EIS).

The task order included a base period of one year, and four (4) one-year option periods, for a total of five years. Performance began for the base period on July 3, 2017. Option I was exercised and its period of performance ended July 2, 2019. The scope of the PWS stated that it “is focused on the rapid acquisition, development, and delivery of effective and affordable capabilities to meet the mission requirements of our Navy, Marine Corps, Department of Defense (DoD), Federal, and Coalition sponsors.

The performance of the above projects was being executed under Order Number HHSP233201700143W when a determination was made by DHHS that Option Period II would not be exercised. Therefore on July 2, 2019, services for all 12 tasks ended. See Section 9 for further details. Since Option Period II was not exercised, USSOCOM no longer had contractual coverage for the completion of these projects. USSOCOM then approached GSA in late July 2019 requesting the award of a bridge contract while a follow-on/replacement competitive acquisition could be developed and conducted.

When the task order ended, the 12 projects that were deemed essential by USSOCOM were at various stages of completion and were scheduled to be completed during the remaining three option periods of the task order. Under the task order, the incumbent contractor managed a team of 16 subcontractors working on these projects. The Government does not have any complete or interim data packages for these projects that could be provided to any other vendor that would allow them to compete for this effort.

As such, there are no other vendors that could assemble this team, or any other team of subcontractors in a timely fashion to preclude further delays associated with the break in contract services.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition:

In the early stages of the procurement process for this action, it was anticipated that GSA would award a bridge task order to allow for all work previously done on the task order to be continued, including these 12 projects. Upon award, GSA would then conduct a full and open competition for a new award with an estimated Period of Performance (PoP) of five years (a base year and four one-year options). At the time, it was anticipated that a new competitive award would take at least nine to 12 months to complete, based on historical GSA procurement data for similar acquisitions once a complete procurement package was received. Based on initial information received by GSA, the original intent was to award a bridge task order by September 30, 2019 as requested by

USSOCOM.

In an effort to justify a sole source bridge award, RFI #RFQ1382592 was issued for a period of 12 days as discussed in more detail under section 8 below, with 167 vendors responding by the closing date with “no quote,” and no vendors expressing interest in the instant procurement. After closing, an email was received from VectorCSP stating their company’s interest in the follow-on competitive requirement and asking to be added to correspondence for the follow on effort.

Due to the significant changes to the original requirement (changing from a broad PWS to the requirement for the completion of only the 12 specific projects), a second RFI (RFI #

RFQ1410790) was posted on January 24, 2020, on eBuy. This second RFI was posted for a period of 11 days to vendors registered under Schedule 00Corp. The RFI was posted to 00CORP SIN: 871 3 (582 vendors) and 00CORP SIN: 871 5 (391 vendors), for a total of 971 vendors. The results yielded 29 vendors responding with “no quote” to the second RFI.

Neither of the RFIs has yielded any additional, potential sources. There is no competition anticipated for the current procurement.

7. Contracting Officer Determination — Fair and Reasonable Cost:

The Senior Contracting Officer (SCO) will determine fair and reasonable pricing based on negotiations with the vendor. In conducting these negotiations, the SCO will utilize methods including, but not limited to, the following to determine the price Fair & Reasonable:

(a) comparison of the quoted price(s) with the Independent Government Estimate (IGE), which was derived from historical competitive pricing data obtained from the previous task order HHSP233201700143W, to include prices and quantities purchased as part of the previous task order, (b) comparison of the quoted rates with the labor rates from Cambridge’s 00CORP Schedule, to include evaluation of the discounts offered, (c) comparison of quoted rates with rates included in other contracts or task orders issued to Cambridge, (d) comparison of quoted rates/prices to the rates/prices included in the previous task order, and (e) comparison with any existing Forward Price Rate Agreements or Rate Recommendations issued for the prime contractor and any subcontractors.

8. Market Research:

Market research was conducted by both USSOCOM and GSA.

USSOCOM reviewed the Technical Industrial Liaison Office (TILO) and Office of Small Business Program (OSBP) databases as a part of market research. In addition, the Directorate IDIQ database was reviewed for contracts/contractors eligible to meet the requirement. No additional sources were found.

Market research was conducted by GSA in accordance with FAR 10 to support the proposed Task Order. The proposed contractor currently holds a GSA 00CORP Schedule, but does not hold any GWAC contract. On July 31, 2019, a Request for Information (RFI #RFQ1382592) was posted to GSA eBuy to determine the availability of contractors capable of performing the Performance Based-Work Statement (PWS) requirements without a transition period.

Schedule holders were instructed to review the PWS and provide specific technical information per each draft PWS Section on how they could perform the work beginning on or before September 30, 2019, and brief descriptions of recent and relevant projects for tasks similar to those identified in the draft PWS. The Government stated that it was seeking more than a simple rehashing of the draft PWS, but instead was looking for a detailed description of how the contractor could provide the services and be at a full performance level on or before September 30, 2019.

The RFI was posted on eBuy to vendors registered under the SINS/PSS Schedule shown in Table 1 below.

TABLE 1 – List of eBuy SINS/Contract RFI RFQ1382592 Released To

SIN/Contract SIN Description # of Vendors

871 3 System Design, Engineering, Integration 568

874 501 Integrated Logistics Support/Supply and

Value Chain Management Services

874 507 Integrated Logistics Support/Operations 159 and Maintenance Logistics Management

00CORP 500 N/A 2,801

On August 12, 2019, the notice closed. GSA had received 167 responses; all were “No Quotes.”

During the August – September timeframe, USSOCOM revised and refined its requirements for the bridge contract to include only the requirement for the completion of the 12 projects that had already begun under the previous task order. As a result of these revisions, any award of a follow-on task order by the original estimated date of September 30, 2019, would be impossible.

Until the 12 projects are completed and the data packages are delivered it will not be possible to fully define the requirements for the competitive follow-on requirement. Currently, USSOCOM is developing segments of the PWS for the competitive follow-on which do not rely on data obtained from the completion of the 12 projects. In addition, because of fiscal constraints, USSOCOM informed GSA that funding for the new competitive award may not be available until at least the second quarter of FY21.

As a result of the significant changes to the requirement since the first RFI was issued in August 2019, a second RFI (RFI # RFQ1410790) was posted on January 24, 2020, to eBuy vendors registered under the 00Corp SINS shown in Table 2 below.

TABLE 2 – List of eBuy SINS RFI Amendment RFQ1410790 Released To

SIN/Contract SIN Description # of Vendors

871-3 System Design, Engineering, Integration 582

874-5 Integrated Logistics Support 391

In the second RFI, vendors were notified that the purpose of the RFI was to validate prior market research showing there are no other vendors that could satisfy the technical and schedule requirements for this work, based on information received in response to the original RFI (which was included as an attachment), and that GSA still intended to pursue a sole source task order for the reduced scope. The second RFI asked vendors to submit responses if they felt that a sole-source award was not reasonable and if they felt they could do the work. Vendors were asked to answer the following two questions if they believed that they could provide the requirements of the draft RFQ,

1. "If you feel your company could do this work, how long after contract award would you need to put together the teams required and start work?"; and

2. “What information would you need from the government to do so?"

Upon the closing of the RFI on February 3, 2020, a total of 29 vendors had responded to the RFI Amendment. All responded with “no quote”. None of the 29 vendors responded to either of the questions that had been included in the RFI.

Based on this market research among the schedule holders and the lack of a data package that can be competed, there is no other vendor that can complete these 12 projects.

9. Other Supporting Facts

In June 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Program Support Center (PSC) notified federal customers it would immediately terminate its assisted acquisition services, which would put additional burden on agencies amid the final quarter of the fiscal year (FY). In a June 14, 2019 memo to civilian agency customers, PSC explained it discontinued its assisted acquisitions offering due to an ongoing internal review, during which it “determined that it does not have the policies, procedures, or internal controls necessary to conduct assisted acquisitions for agencies outside of HHS.” A separate memo to DoD customers said PSC cannot certify it will comply with assisted acquisitions requirements for FY2019, as prescribed in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 17.7 and the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

In preparation for the requirement’s follow on task order, GSA requested previous contractual documents from HHS, but HHS responded by saying this was not possible because the files had been secured and seized by the inspector general and the Department of Justice as part of an investigation of the internal operations and contract awards made by their group.

This severely hampered the ability of GSA staff to get information needed to solicit and award a new contract (or task order), either competitively or non-competitively. The only public record that could be found was the FPDS-NG record for the award which showed that it was awarded competitively as a small disabled veteran owned small business set aside and only one quote was received.

In addition, USSOCOM was unable to provide GSA with any documentation. Eventually, the GSA Contract Specialist was able to locate the Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR). The COR was able to provide a copy of the contract, the contract modifications, and the individual project plans submitted by the Contractor.

Due to the unknown circumstances involved with the sudden end of the previous task order and the lack of input / oversight of the creation of acquisition documents by GSA, GSA had concerns about potential Inherently Governmental Functions (IGFs), as defined under FAR 7.5, being conducted by the contractor. Any IGF possibly could result in Organizational Conflicts of Interest (OCIs) under the instant effort or any follow on competition. A Determination & Findings (D&F) – not Inherently Governmental Function was accomplished and signed. After gathering input and advice, GSA contracting determined that CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEMS INC. would be potentially eligible to receive an award, absent an official suspension or debarment action against the contractor. The GSA Contracting Officer completed a Determination & Findings (D&F) – Affirmative Determination of Responsibility for Cambridge. See the contract file for both D&Fs.

By restricting this instant procurement to the completion of the 12 unfinished projects, all known risks will be minimized. USSOCOM will be able to continue to develop specific requirements for the FY21 competition and no vendor will be precluded from that competition.

10. Statement of Actions to Overcome Barriers to Competition

As stated previously, the completion of the 12 projects will allow USSOCOM to take delivery of all reports and technical data associated with these projects. USSOCOM will use this information to develop specific requirements for a competitive procurement for any follow-on award. USSOCOM is currently working with GSA in conducting additional Market Research to enhance future competition. This market research includes research into various contract vehicles, including OASIS. Further market research plans include engaging with industry to possibly include conducting of Industry Days.

11. Requiring Agency Certification:

I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance which form the basis for this justification are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Robert (Rob) L. Riley, Jr. Date Chief, Technology Insertion, SOF AT&L PEO Fixed Wing

12. Contracting Officer Certification:

The undersigned has determined that the anticipated cost to the Government for this acquisition will be fair and reasonable. Further, I certify this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Matthew F. Wright Date Senior Contracting Officer

AASD/FAS/GSA

13. Contracting Competition Advocate

Based on the above facts, it is the approving official’s determination that the above referenced circumstances justifying limiting the source is required and in the Government’s best interest to fulfill the required acquisition.

Jacquelyn H. Atwater Date Procuring Contracting Activity Competition Advocate

MATTHEW WRIGHT Digitally signed by MATTHEW WRIGHT

Date: 2020.02.28 09:59:54 -05'00'

RILEY.ROBERT.L.JR.1265301912 Digitally signed by RILEY.ROBERT.L.JR.1265301912

Date: 2020.02.28 10:50:20 -05'00'