Redacted JA - CL NLEC Bridge Extension.pdf

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 four-month extension to firm-fixed-price Task Order (TO) number 36C10B21N0002CENT issued under the National Local Exchange Carrier (NLEC) Next Generation (NG) Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) Contract 36C10B20D0030 with Century Link/Qwest Government Solutions/Lumen Technologies (referred hereafter as

Century Link), located at 4250 N Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203 for LEC telecommunication data 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 604 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 May 14, 2021. The period of performance for this proposed action is four-months.

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: Century Link is the current provider of services for the 604 SDPs included within this requirement and therefore only Century Link 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 nine 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 issued seven solicitations for these competitive TOs and it is anticipated that two of the seven will be awarded before May 14th, the current expiration date of this bridge contract. The other seven TOs will not be

Century Link NLEC Bridge Extension Control Number VA-21-00058962 awarded, and two will not be solicited and awarded, until May. It was VA’s intent to award the nine competitive TOs shortly after the bridge contracts were awarded, but due to receiving no offers and/or no technically acceptable offers on some solicitations, extended question and answer periods on many of the solicitations, and other circumstances that caused unanticipated delays in soliciting such as the opening and closing of multiple SDPs and changes in the commercial telecommunications industry which impacted the finalization of requirements, VA was unable to achieve awards in time.

All of the competitive TOs will require a transition period for any awardee, even an incumbent. As such, all of the competitive TOs solicited to date included a three-month transition-in period as a firm fixed priced contract line item number (CLIN).

This transition-in period includes preparation, categorization, and prioritization for services to be transitioned, and determination of whether these can be handed as “soft transitions” or require additional support, as well as exaction of the transfer of services. 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 of the incumbent contractor. Because of the magnitude of the potential effort to accomplish these tasks for the 604 SDPs included within this requirement, VA anticipates that the aforementioned activities would take a minimum of 3 months. This estimate is based on similar size efforts of transition-in efforts.

The above timeline assumes that all activities occur as anticipated. As previously noted, two of the nine competitive TOs have an anticipated award date before April 30th and include a transition-in period from May 1st through July 31st. The remaining seven competitive TOs that will be awarded in May will have a transition period of June 1st through August 31st.

As such, should VA be unable to extend this bridge effort to maintain the existing LEC services, VA telecommunications would be unable to properly function, and lines would not be under contract to be maintained. This would significantly increase the risk to its mission of providing care to the Veteran. 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

Century Link NLEC Bridge Extension Control Number VA-21-00058962 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