M_Evaluation Factors 07062023.docx

SECTION M - EVALUATION FACTORS FOR AWARD

1.0 BASIS FOR AWARD

This requirement will be under FAR Part 15, the Government intends to award one five (5) year Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract and will select the proposal found to be most advantageous to the Government considering technical, past performance, and price. The tradeoff process for this acquisition will permit a full tradeoff between technical, past performance and price for acceptable proposals reaching the contract award decision. The relative importance of factors in descending order is as follows: 1. Technical, 2. Past Performance, 3. Price. Technical factor is significantly more important than Past Performance. The non-price factors, when combined, are significantly more important than price.

This contract is a competitive full and open acquisition with a requirement of 30% small business participation. The Government reserves the right to make no award at all. This acquisition will result in a hybrid contract with both Firm Fixed Price and Time and Material CLINs.

1.1 This source selection will be conducted in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 12, Acquisition of Commercial Items and FAR Part 15, Contracting by Negotiation, as supplemented by the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS), and the Air Force Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (AFFARS). These regulations are available electronically at https://www.acquisition.gov/content/regulations. The Contract will be awarded to the offeror deemed responsible in accordance with the FAR, as supplemented, whose proposal conforms to the solicitation’s requirements (to include all stated terms, conditions, representations, certifications, and all other information required by Section L– Instructions to Offerors –of this solicitation, and is judged, based on the evaluation factors to represent the best value to the Government. The Government seeks to award to the offeror who gives the Air Force the greatest confidence that it will best meet the requirements. This may result in an award to a higher rated, higher priced offeror or a lower-priced, lower-rated proposal if the government determines that the premium associated with the higher-rated proposal is not justified a where the decision is consistent with the evaluation factors, and the Decision Authority reasonably determines that performance of the technically acceptable higher priced offeror outweighs the price difference. The Decision Authority will base the source selection decision on an integrated assessment of proposals against all source selection criteria in the solicitation (described below). While the Government source selection evaluation team and the Decision Authority will strive for maximum objectivity, the source selection process, by its nature, is subjective; and therefore, professional judgment is implicit throughout the entire process.

2.0 EVALUATION FACTORS AND RATING METHODOLOGY

There are three evaluation factors:

Factor I: Technical Approach

Factor II: Past Performance Factor III: Price

2.1 EVALUATION FACTOR OVERVIEW

The Contracting Officer will ensure the offeror is compliant for a Facility Clearance, System Award Management (SAM), and in Government Furnished Information (GFI) and International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR). To be considered compliant for Facility Clearance, the Contracting Officer (CO) will validate each Prime Offerors Facility Clearance (FCL) via the Defense Information Security System (DISS). The CO will validate that the offeror is registered in SAM. The CO will ensure the offeror is registered and approved in ITAR.

Offerors will be notified via email if its FCL, SAM, and GFI and ITAR are validated. If the Offeror does not meet the aforementioned criteria the Offeror will be deemed “noncompliant” and eliminated from consideration for award. The Offeror will receive written notice IAW FAR 15.503.

The Government will evaluate proposals of the compliant offerors for Factor I Technical Approach, subfactor I Gateway-written Question/Oral presentation as acceptable or unacceptable basis. Only proposals that receive an acceptable rating for Factor I, Subfactor 1 Gateway Question/Oral presentation will proceed to Subfactors 2-4 of Technical Approach. Factor II Past Performance will be assessed at the overall factor level via a performance confidence assessment, which is derived from evaluations of the individual past performance submissions. Only those proposals that receive a rating that is neutral or satisfactory and better will move on to Factor III, Price. Price will be evaluated to ensure it is fair and reasonable, balanced, and realistic. Award will be made to the offeror who is considered technically acceptable, has at least a satisfactory performance confidence assessment or neutral, and has a fair, reasonable, balanced, and realistic price.

The Government intends to evaluate offers and award a contract without exchanges with offerors. Therefore, the offeror's initial offer should contain the offeror's best terms from a price, technical, and past performance standpoint. The Government reserves the right to conduct exchanges with the offeror if it is later determined by the Contracting Officer to be in the best interest of the Government.

2.2. EVALUATION FACTORS

2.2.1 – Factor I: Technical (Volume 1) Each subfactor will be evaluated separately. Subfactor 1 is rated as acceptable/unacceptable. Must receive acceptable rating for the written gateway question AND an acceptable rating for the presentation gateway question. If an unacceptable rating is received for either portion the overall rating for subfactor 1 will be considered unacceptable. The subfactors in section 2.0 are listed in order of importance. Each subfactor will be evaluated individually. The subfactor scoring will roll up into an overall rating for Factor I.

Risks and Technical will be evaluated and rated using the table below:

2.2.1.1 Sub Factor I: Gateway: Written Question/Oral Presentation The Gateway Question is to ascertain whether the offeror has sufficient understanding of technical concepts and requirements of STORM to warrant further analysis of their proposal. Offerors must answer the question within the page limit an acceptable response is considered to address the combat engineering function and context of a joint force environment. The topics of the Gateway Question can be found in section L. The written portion of the gateway will receive an adjectival rating in accordance with the below table:

Gateway: Written Question Ratings

Oral presentations shall discuss the offeror’s proposed answer to the gateway question. The oral presentation is evaluated on an acceptable/unacceptable basis. To be considered acceptable, the presentation should include solutions to the gateway question and explain why those solutions are adopted. The presentation also should walk through the development, integration, and implementation processes of the solutions. During the presentation, an offeror might be asked to provide details on the design concept and/or to describe potential applications to other areas of STORM combat modeling.

Note: There is a one (1) hour time limit for the presentation and the contracting officer shall terminate the presentation after the one-hour mark.

The acceptable/unacceptable determination is aligned with an adjectival rating in accordance with the below table:

Technical Approach (Presentation) Ratings

Offerors receiving an Acceptable rating for the written portion AND the presentation of the Gateway Question will move to Factor I, Subfactor 2-4.

2.2.1.2 Subfactor 2: Personnel Management Plan

The Government will evaluate the offerors Personnel Management Plan and rate it as acceptable when the government is persuaded that the offeror will provide and retain qualified personnel, including key personnel described in PWS section 2.7.

2.2.1.3 Subfactor 3: Software Management Plan

The Government will evaluate the offerors Software Management Plan and rate it as acceptable when the government is persuaded that the offeror has an approach to ensure the integrity of the STORM software architecture and framework. The Software Management Plan must discuss implementation of Risk Management Framework (RMF) process for STORM in accordance with the Air Force Instruction (AFI) 17-101 to be compliant with the Department of Defense Instruction 8510.01.

2.2.1.4 Subfactor 4: User Service Plan

The Government will evaluate the offerors User Service plan and rate it as acceptable when the government is persuaded that the offeror can successfully provide user support activities, including the user group meeting, help desk, and training. The Government will evaluate the User Service Plan for compliance to all Government rules and regulations, such as ITAR, to prevent an unauthorized user from accessing protected data.

2.2.2 – Factor II: Past Performance Each individual past performance submission is reviewed on three aspects: recency, relevancy, and quality. Once all an offeror’s individual submissions are reviewed a factor-level rating called the Performance Confidence Assessment will be assigned. A rating of Satisfactory Confidence and above will result in an acceptable rating. Offerors without a record of recent/relevant past performance or information on past performance is so sparse that no meaningful confidence assessment rating can be reasonably assigned will be rated as Acceptable.

The Past Performance Questionnaire (PPQ) will be used to evaluate the offerors recent and relevant contract.

a. Recency – For past performance to be considered recent it must consist of an effort that had a period of performance taking place within the last three (3) years. Past performance submissions are considered acceptable or unacceptable in regard to recency in accordance with the below table:

Past Performance Recency Ratings

b. Relevancy – For past performance to be considered relevant the offeror should consider the similarity of product/service/support, complexity, dollar value, contract type, and key personnel use. The Government will assign an OVERALL relevancy rating based on an aggregate assessment of all evaluated past performance. Relevancy in regard to scope, magnitude of effort, and complexities will be based on, but not limited to, similarities between the given past performance and this solicitation in terms of the following subject areas:

1. Campaign Modeling

2. ANSI/IEEE 828-1998 System and Software Standards

3. Software Development

4. Help-Desk Support

5. Website Support (Restricted Access)

6. Classroom Presentation & Training Support

7. Courseware Development

For the purposes of evaluation these objectives are given equal weight. The offeror’s past performance relevancy for each submission provided will be given an adjectival rating in accordance with the below table:

Past Performance Relevancy Ratings

c. Quality – This aspect of past performance evaluation is to establish the overall quality of the offeror’s past performance. Each recent past performance submission reviewed will receive an assessment of the performance quality. The past performance quality for each citation will receive and adjectival rating from the below table:

Past Performance Quality Ratings

d. Performance Confidence – As a result of recency, relevancy, and quality rating for the past performance submissions offerors receive one integrated overall performance confidence assessment rating. Although the past performance evaluation reviews each past performance submission, the resulting performance confidence assessment rating is made at the factor level and represents and overall evaluation of the contractor performance. The performance confidence assessment rating will receive an adjectival rating from the below table:

Performance Confidence Rating

Offerors receiving a Substantial, Satisfactory, or Unknown Confidence rating will move to Factor III.

2.2.3 – Factor III: Price The Offeror’s Price proposal will be evaluated for award purposes, based on the total price proposed for the core task requirements and the proposed prices in the Rate Schedule (see Attachment 8). The proposal will be evaluated for reasonableness, fairness, realism, and balanced pricing. The Government reserves the right to eliminate a proposal from further evaluation due to evaluated prices that are unfair, unreasonable, or unbalanced.

Comparison of proposed prices received in response to this solicitation is the preferred and intended price analysis technique. Other techniques and procedures found in FAR 15.404-1, if deemed necessary and reasonable, may be used to ensure a fair, reasonable, and balanced price.

The proposals will be evaluated under the Professional Employee Compensation Plan (PECP) and evaluated for realism IAW FAR 52.222-46.

Evaluation of FAR 52.217-8, Option to Extend Services. The solicitation and subsequent award for this acquisition contains the clause at FAR 52.217-8, Option to Extend Services. This option to extend the contract term will be evaluated as part of the initial evaluation, whereby any resultant exercise of this option is within scope of the pending contract. The option provision may be exercised more than once, but the total extension of performance hereunder shall not exceed six (6) months. Offerors are required only to price the ordering periods. Offerors shall not submit a price for the potential six-month extension of services period.

The Government will evaluate the possible prices for FAR 52.217-8 through its evaluation of the ordering period prices. If conditions warrant the exercise of this FAR52.217-8, the price(s) for continued performance under this clause shall be at the same price(s) as awarded for ordering period. As such, if the ordering period prices are considered fair and reasonable then the cost of the possible extension of services under FAR 52.217-8 shall be considered fair and reasonable and in the best interest of the Government.

3.0 Discussions

The Government reserves the right to award without discussions. However, the Government reserves the right to hold discussions using Evaluation Notices (ENs) if, during evaluation it is determined to be in the best interest of the government. Therefore, offerors are advised to submit quotes that are fully and clearly acceptable without additional information. Any discussions will be conducted in accordance with FAR 15.306.

4.0 Award

The Government shall select the source whose proposal offers the best value in accordance with the established criteria. Award will be made to the responsible offeror who is Technically Acceptable, has at least a satisfactory performance confidence assessment or neutral, and has a fair, reasonable, balanced, and realistic price.

The Decision Authority shall select the Offeror whose proposal is most advantageous and presents the best value to the Government in accordance with the established criteria in this Source Selection. The Decision Authority will follow the law.

END OF SECTION

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