PWS_Asset_Management_Upgrade_Final.docx

PERFORMANCE WORK STATEMENT

DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS

EMPLOYEE EDUCATION SYSTEM (EES)

AVID MEDIA CENTRAL ASSET MANAGEMENT UPGRADE

Dated August 30, 2021

1. Title of Project: Avid Media Central Asset Management Upgrade

2. Background: The VHA Employee Education System (EES) provides educational video programming for VA employees and for veterans. These educational programs support Veterans Health Administration (VHA) facilities’ ability to stay abreast of the latest changes in treatment modalities, techniques, and regulations. The use of live and recorded video enables a much larger percentage of the VHA workforce to receive technical and professional training on a recurring basis. EES maintains Avid Technology non-linear video edit systems to provide finished video deliverables. In 2019 and 2020, EES contracted a complete upgrade of video editing systems to Avid’s MediaCentral Production Management hardware, software, and workflows.

EES intends to procure a turn-key contract in 2021 that will provide an upgrade of the Avid MediaCentral Production Management platform to include Avid MediaCentral’s Media Asset Management module.

3. Scope of Work: The Contractor shall provide all labor, equipment, supervision, and other resources required to deploy an Avid MediaCentral Asset Management system. The Media Central Asset Management system will be an upgrade to the two existing EES MediaCentral Production Management systems and will integrate with the existing Avid equipment and IP networks. The contractor shall provide the Avid MediaCentral Asset Management system on a VM (Virtual Machine) infrastructure, with a SAN (Storage Area Network) shared storage. The contractor shall first analyze and plan to utilize and integrate all existing VA Avid equipment for the upgrade. The contractor shall provide project management support and workflow design for this project at VA locations in St. Louis, Missouri and in Salt Lake City, Utah.

To provide video file transcoding functionality, the contractor shall provide a transcoding system that meets the PWS’ salient characteristics and that is configured for Avid MediaCentral Asset Management API Connectors. Additionally, the contractor shall provide OEM-approved system commissioning and administration training.

To support the VA-managed and isolated Avid IP network, the contractor shall provide a next generation firewall appliance that meets the PWS salient characteristics. Additionally, the contractor shall provide OEM-approved system commissioning and administration training for all systems on the PWS.

Upon receipt of all new equipment under this PWS, VA staff will perform physical installation into existing VA equipment racks and install all power, networking, and communications cabling prior to contractor’s scheduled onsite commissioning.

4. Applicable Documents

· Avid Media Central |Cloud UX Virtual Environment with VMware

· 18AM-0172941_VA_St.Louis_Drawing_04012021a

· 18AM-0172941_VA_Salt_Lake_Drawing_04012021a

5. Mandatory Tasks and Deliverables: The Contractor shall perform the mandatory tasks and provide the specific deliverables described below within the performance period stated in this PWS. If, for any reason, any deliverable cannot be delivered on time according to the below schedule, the Contractor shall provide a written explanation to the Program Manager (PM)/Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) three days prior to deliverable due date ( one year from award). This written email transmittal shall include a firm commitment of when the work shall be completed. This transmittal to the PM/COR shall cite the reasons for the delay and the impact on the overall project.

The Contractor shall not commit or permit any act that interferes with the performance of work awarded to another Contractor or with the performance of Government employees. In any case where, in the course of fulfilling the contract requirements, the Contractor disturbs any work guaranteed under another separate contract, the Contractor must restore such disturbed work.

5.1. Kick-off meeting: The Contractor shall schedule and initiate, with the VA Contracting Officer (CO) and the Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) concurrence, a post-award Kick-Off meeting with the COR to discuss project objectives, scope of work, expectations and review project deadlines and deliverables within ten (10) business days after date of award. The Contractor shall provide a project schedule and minutes from the meeting.

5.2. The contractor shall perform turnkey services to provide all equipment, resources, labor, upgrades, and commissioning services required for an Avid MediaCentral | Asset Management system to include, but not limited to, the following key workflows and upgrade items listed in Task list 5.2.8.

5.2.1 Each MediaCentral | Production Management system will contain a mixture of Media Composer projects, flattened files, sequences, master clips, audio/video only clips, and camera original files that will be archived to the MediaCentral | Asset Management system.

5.2.2 Documents such as PDF’s or images such as JPEG’s will be archived by attaching them as collateral to MAM assets.

5.2.3 Each MediaCentral | Production Management system will be able to search their local database, the Media Central | Asset Management database, and the remote MediaCentral | Production database to find content.

5.2.4 After searching content located on the MediaCentral | Asset Management system can be restored to either Production Management system.

5.2.5 After searching content located on the remote MediaCentral | Production Management system can be transferred to the local system using a MediaCentral | Delivery process.

5.2.6 All production and craft editing work will be done on one of the two MediaCentral | Production Management systems. Media Composer will not be connected directly to the MediaCentral | Asset Management system.

5.2.7 The MediaCentral | Asset Management system shall be able to archive and restore with the VA-owned StorNext / Quantum LTO 8 tape system.

5.2.8 The contractor shall provide the following upgrade items:

One Year

St. Louis

MediaCentral | Asset Management Connector Server (MPI)

· Commission one (1) MediaCentral | Cloud UX Server on VM

· Avid NEXIS, including: Update one (1) existing NEXIS E4 engine

· Commission one (1) MediaCentral | Production Engine on VM. Also hosting MediaCentral | Indexer and MediaCentral | Lookup services

· Commission one (1) MediaCentral | Deliver server on VM. To facilitate content transfer between the two MediaCentral | Production Management systems.

· Commission one (1) MediaCentral | Asset Management Connector server on VM To facilitate connection between MediaCentral | Production Management and MediaCentral | Asset Management.

· Update four (4) Avid Media Composer workstations

· Update one (1) Avid FastServe Ingest server

· Avid NEXIS, including: Update one (1) existing NEXIS | E4 engine

· Update one (1) MediaCentral | Production Engine on existing Dell R640 i. Also hosting MediaCentral | Indexer and MediaCentral | Lookup services

· Update one (1) MediaCentral | Deliver server on existing Dell R640 i. To facilitate content transfer between the two MediaCentral | Production Management systems.

· Commission one (1) MediaCentral | Asset Management Connector server on Dell R640 i. To facilitate connection between MediaCentral | Production Management and MediaCentral | Asset Management.

· Update on (1) MediaCentral | Cloud UX server on existing Dell R640

· Update three (3) Avid Media Composer workstations

· Avid will provide professional services including project management, commissioning, workflow, and solution engineering to deliver the project scope as described in this SOW.

· Nine (9) days Avid MediaCentral | Asset Management customized operational training

5.3. The contractor shall provide a VM infrastructure and Virtual Machines to support the required Avid and non-Avid VM application specifications, as defined in Table 2. The contractor shall collaborate with Avid Technology to meet or exceed Avid recommendations and guidelines for the VM infrastructure. The VM infrastructure must include the VM licensing, operating systems, VM tools, compatibility settings, hardware devices, and all configurations necessary for Avid applications’ installation and commissioning. The VM environment must follow Avid VM best practices as defined in the document Avid Media Central |Cloud UX Virtual Environment with VMware, and the recommended connectivity shown in and the recommended connectivity shown in documents 18AM-0172941_VA_St.Louis_Drawing_04012021a and 18AM-0172941_VA_Salt_Lake_Drawing_04012021a. All Virtual Machine hardware shall be located on-premise at VA-managed video facility locations specified by the PWS.

All communication with Avid shall be directed through Rhea Mettel, Manager- Avid Government Services. Email: Rhea.Mettel@avid.com; telephone: (301)428-3182.

5.4. The contractor shall provide an external SAN Shared Storage system to maintain the Virtual Machines listed in Table 2. The Shared Storage shall provide vCenter support for host fail-overs and load balancing. The Shared Storage shall meet or exceed the Host Server and SAN best practices listed in the Avid Media Central |Cloud UX Virtual Environment with VMware document. All SAN storage systems shall be located on-premise at VA-managed video facility locations specified by the PWS.

Table 2, VM (Virtual Machine) Applications Salient Characteristics

Avid MAM Application Server- St. Louis

Avid MAM Application Server – St. Louis

Avid MAM SQL Server – St. Louis

Windows SQL Server 2016 SP2, 2017, or 2019.

Avid MAM Database Storage – St. Louis

150 TB

This is where the archived media will be stored so the size will need to increase as more content is archived.

Avid MediaCentral | Cloud UX Server -St. Louis

Avid MediaCentral | Search Grid (Phonetic Search)

Transcoder system

5.5. The contractor shall integrate the capability for the Media Central Asset Management system to archive and restore Avid project media and metadata to the VA-owned Quantum LTO 8 tape drive system, which uses the StorNext file system.

5.6. The contractor shall provide a transcoder system to meet the salient characteristics in Table 3. The transcoder system will provide transcoding support for Avid MediaCentral | Asset Management. Transcoder software and licensing must be able to operate on the VM infrastructure. The transcoder shall include first year of support providing software updates and technical support Monday through Friday, 6:00AM – 6:00PM Pacific Time (PT) excluding holidays with 6-8 hour response time during regular business hours as well as 24 hour access to Customer Portal Cases, Knowledgebase & Educational Content. The contractor shall provide one day of OEM-certified transcoder system commissioning and one day of training. Due to COVID-19 concerns, the field Service engineer may need to configure, commission, and perform basic workflow consultation remotely. Service must be delivered during weekdays and normal business hours.

Table 3, Transcoder Characteristics

1. SD & HD transcoding for proxy, web, edit, broadcast server, and MXF formats including IMF and DPP. Allows creation of AAF files for Media Composer (without Interplay). Includes broadcast server monitoring and delivery, XML metadata transformation and delivery, and web service notifications.

2. Avid Interplay Option - Enables delivery and extraction of files and metadata in to and out of Avid Interplay using Vantage Transcode Pro Connect. Enables AAF/MXF media encoding, metadata insertion, and delivery via Avid Transfer Engine and Avid Interplay Web Services. Also includes additional Avid Web Services features for updating existing metadata and adding multiresolution encoded versions to existing assets, and the Avid Service Media Monitor for extracting media and metadata from Interplay assets. Note: This option is available for Vantage Transcode Pro Connect only. A Transcode Pro Connect license is required.

3. V-METADATA-SW functionality and integration with Avid Media Central Asset Management system connector API

4. Capability for future license option to enable delivery and extraction of files and metadata in to and out of Avid Interplay, Enables AAF/MXF media encoding, metadata insertion, and delivery via Avid Transfer Engine and Avid Interplay Web Services. Also includes additional Avid Web Services features for updating existing metadata and adding multiresolution encoded versions to existing assets, and the Avid Service Media Monitor for extracting media and metadata from Interplay assets.

5.7. The contractor shall provide a next generation firewall appliance (NGFW), with salient characteristics specified in Table 4. The firewall appliance will be located at the St. Louis facility. The firewall appliance shall include one year of OEM premium support, commissioning, and operator/admin training.

Table 4, Firewall Appliance Characteristics

Firewall throughput (App-ID, appmix) =2.1 Gbps;

Threat Prevention throughput (appmix)=1.2Gbps;

IPsec VPN throughput=1.6Gbps;

New sessions per second=13,000;

Maximum sessions=192,000 Virtual systems (base)=1;

Interfaces supported=

10/100/1000 (4), SFP (4), 10 SFP+ (4);

Management I/O= 10/100/1000 out-of-band management (1), 10/100/1000 high availability (2), RJ-45 console (1), USB (1), Micro USB console (1);

Size=1U, 19” standard rack (1.75” H x 14.5” D x 17.125” W);

Power supplies= 450 W AC (2; one is redundant);

Disk drives=

240 GB SSD;

· Zone-based network segmentation and zone protection; DoS protection against flooding of new sessions

Threat Prevention

· Command-and-control (C2) activity stopped from exfiltrating data or delivering secondary malware payloads; infected hosts identified through DNS sinkholing

URL Filtering

· Custom URL categories, alerts, and notification pages

Table 1: Mandatory Deliverables

Due Date

5.1

Kick-off meeting minutes and project schedule

Within 90 days of award

5.5

6 Quality Control:

6.2 Contractor’s Quality Control Program: The Contractor shall develop and maintain an effective internal quality control program to ensure that services performed are in accordance with the PWS. The Contractor shall develop and implement procedures to identify, prevent, and ensure non-recurrence of defective services. As a minimum requirement, the Contractor shall internally develop quality control procedures that address the areas identified below in the Government’s Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP).

6.3 Performance Monitoring: Contractor’s performance will be monitored per the below table. The PM/COR will certify receipt of services and/or goods and recommends acceptance of the services/deliverables. This process will be used for approval of payment for the Contractor’s invoices and will serve as the mechanism to document that the overall performance of the Contractor has been acceptable for the period covered by the invoice.

Performance Monitoring

EMPLOYEE EDUCATION SYSTEM

PERFORMANCE WORK STATEMENT

MEDIA CENTRAL ASSET MANAGEMENT UPGRADE

MASTER

7 Government-Furnished Equipment (GFE)/Government Furnished Information (GFI):

VA-owned Avid Equipment (reference St. Louis and Salt Lake drawings)

8 Performance Details:

8.2 Period of Performance: The period of performance shall be for one (1) year after contract award.

8.3 Place of Performance: Work shall be performed at the VA Medical Center at 1 Jefferson Barracks Drive, Building 56, St. Louis, MO and at the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building, 125 South State Street, Suite 2222, Salt Lake City, UT 84138.

Contractor shall provide services during normal business hours from 8:00 A.M. to 4:30 P.M.

local time, Monday through Friday, or as otherwise specified.

8.4 Observance of Government Holidays. There are 10 Federal holidays set by law (USC Title 5 Section 6103). Under current definitions, four are set by date:

If any of the above falls on a Saturday, then Friday shall be observed as a holiday. Similarly, if one falls on a Sunday, then Monday shall be observed as a holiday. The other six holidays are set by a day of the week and month:

8.5 Type of Contract: The Government anticipates award of a Firm Fixed-Price contract.

8.6 Travel: Travel and per diem are cost reimbursable items, and they shall be reimbursed in accordance with VA/Federal Travel Regulations (FTR). Each Contractor invoice must include copies of all receipts that support the travel costs claimed in the invoice. The Contractor is only entitled to actual cost spent while on travel that falls within the perimeters as set forth within the FTR, to include food. Travel must be pre-approved by the Contracting Officer (CO). Travel must be priced separately in the price schedule. Local travel within a 50-mile radius from the Contractor’s facility is considered the cost of doing business and will not be reimbursed. This includes travel, subsistence, and associated labor charges for travel time. Travel performed for personal convenience and daily travel to and from work at the Contractor’s facility will not be reimbursed. Travel, subsistence, and associated labor charges for travel time for travel beyond a 50-mile radius of the Contractor’s facility are authorized on a case-by-case basis and must be pre-approved by the CO.

The Government anticipates travel under this PWS, to include attending contract-related meetings through the period of performance.

8.7 Contractor Reporting Requirements (as required)

a. The Contractor shall submit a bi-weekly (every two weeks) progress reports, addressing the status of all active efforts. These bi-weekly reports shall also serve as the official reporting for order compliance, and each one will cover progress made for the prior report. At the conclusion of each deliverable, the Contractor shall provide a written memorandum documenting deliverable completion.

b. The bi-weekly progress report shall also identify any problems that may have arisen and provide an explanation of how each problem was resolved or, where one was not resolved, a plan for how the problem will be resolved.

c. The Contractor shall take minutes of all contract status conference calls and/or meetings held with the Program Manager. Copies of these minutes shall be attached to the next bi-weekly progress report.

d. Bi-weekly progress reports shall contain the following:

1) Contract status summary

2) Change request status (new, open, closed since last report)

3) Issue status (new, open, closed since last report)

4) Schedule status

5) Minutes of status meetings

e. The Contractor shall notify the PM/COR, in writing, if problems arise that could have an adverse effect upon the performance of the contract.

8.8 Contract Post-Award Meeting: The Contractor shall not commence performance on the tasks in this PWS until the CO has conducted a post-award meeting or has advised the Contractor that the post-award meeting has been waived.

8.9 Formal Acceptance or Rejection of Deliverables: The Government will review each deliverable within 15 business days and provide comments. The Contractor shall have 5 business days to incorporate the Government’s comments and make appropriate revisions.

8.10 Changes to the PWS

Any changes to this PWS shall be authorized and approved only through written correspondence from the CO. A copy of each change will be kept in a contract folder, along with all other products of the contract. Costs incurred by the Contractor through the actions of parties other than the CO shall be borne by the Contractor.

8.11 Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure: It is agreed that:

a. The preliminary and final deliverables, as well as all associated working papers and other material deemed relevant by VA that have been generated by the Contractor in the performance of this contract, are the exclusive property of the U.S. Government and shall be submitted upon request to the CO at the conclusion of the contract.

b. The CO will be the sole authorized official to release, verbally or in writing, any data, draft deliverables, final deliverables, or any other written or printed materials pertaining to this contract. No information shall be released by the Contractor. Any request for information relating to this contract presented to the Contractor shall be submitted to the CO for response.

c. Press releases, marketing material, or any other printed or electronic documentation related to this contract shall not be publicized without the written approval of the CO.

d. Non-Disclosure and Conflict of Interest: The Contractor and Contractor’s staff may have access to Government-sensitive information and shall be required to sign non-disclosure and conflict of interest statements.

9 GENERAL

Contractors, contractor personnel, subcontractors, and subcontractor personnel shall be subject to the same Federal laws, regulations, standards, and VA Directives and Handbooks as Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and VA personnel regarding information and information system security.

10 SECURITY RE QUIREMENTS A Security Accreditation Package is not required. Contractor will not have access to any VA system or sensitive information.