F - QNA.pdf

Questions and Answers

1. Is a Cisco Gold Partner overseas okay? We would prefer a US based Gold Partner due to the access they will have during this setup; but overseas partner is not precluded. Please expand on how this might impact project in narrative portion of technical proposal. All quotes should identify the Cisco Gold Partner they are working with.

2. Does every location have a prior version of the CUCM deployment? Should we consider that every seat has PoE power needed, and we do not need to make QoS connections? Some locations have CME, some have CUCM, various version levels. All sites have PoE, QoS should already be configured at the sites, but would been verified and should “tweaked” as necessary during deployment.

3. How are the sites connected to carry voice traffic? Will we be routing the calls through the central location or through the SRST gateways at each site? Calls to inbound and outbound of the CUCM cluster will be through local PSTN via PRI at each site via the local gateway that is part of this procurement. SRST to be used in the event of network outage to the CUCM cluster.

4. Are there any special requirements for emergency dialing or any applicable requirements? 911 calls would go out the local gateway/PRI circuits at each respective site.

5. Do we need to provide anything for cyber security of this system? Firewalls, access controls etc. No.

6. Will we need to provide VOIP and analog circuits for the project? No.

7. What type of configuration is required for the wireless phones? Can you provide wireless network details? Current VoIP WIFI SSID is using PEAP.

8. Should we consider redundancy for each site and the central site? Current design has everything going in to

Central location. We are not setup to deploy a redundant site at this time.

9. Do we need to run any type of encryption for the calls? Yes

10. Do we need to design a data center for the central CUCM? Rack Space, connectivity, security, power etc.? No, already has a data center.

11. Cisco Sales Engineer advised there are non-TAA parts for the phones. Should the phones be TAA compliant? Yes.

12. Cisco Sales Engineer advised there are issues with the SmartNet sku for the majority of the phones. Please advise.

Requirement is for 12 months, Next Business Day 8x5 support). All other equipment should be (60 months, Next

Business Day 8x5).

13. Pricing Schedule: Reference pricing schedule spreadsheet

a. In the Site-Totals tab, the “Total Install Cost” (B:32) is pointing to a column (=BOM!$H$539) in BOM tab that does not exist. It looks like the column G539 an H539 is merged. Could this be corrected? Please make corrections as applicable.

b. In the Site-Totals tab, the “Paging Cost” (B27) is pointing to a column (=BOM!$K$532) in the BOM tab.

Can the Government clarify how this value is derived from the BOM tab? Or where should we enter this value? Apologies, the formulas were not vetted before publishing the pricing schedule. Please make corrections as needed.

14. Can the Government provide more detailed instructions on how to fill the pricing schedule spreadsheet? Pricing should be setup similar to Gov’t provide pricing worksheet, but does not need to be ours, necessarily. It should show all items included, even zero dollar parts, and include unit pricing, quantity and total for each contract line item.

15. Option Year Cost: Reference SOW.pdf, Page 1 “Continued/Sustained Support” - “Vendor to provide pricing for 4 option years to ensure compliance with IHS security and HIPPA requirements and at the discretion of IHS to patch, upgrade, troubleshoot, optimize the system, or to provide additional knowledge transfer to allow IHS to better manage the system.”

Reference RFQ.pdf, Page 5 “PRICE QUOTE: The price quote is to be submitted as a Firm Fixed Price quote using the equipment list as a Price Schedule. The attached Price and Cost Schedule should be filled out completely with the total price of the contract for every estimated year and total. Price will be evaluated in whole, including all service options and optional accessories quoted. Failure to provide quotes for items may be deemed non-responsive and may not be further evaluated.

The current Pricing Schedule spreadsheet allows for estimating procurement and installation cost. However, there is no provision to allow vendors to estimate the cost for option years. Can the Government provide guidance on how we should cost the option years and what cost items should be included?

Please include line items corresponding to annual support. The pricing sheet was only prepared to include the

BOM, this was an oversight.

16. How are key personnel are defined (i.e. Project Leadership or Delivery Staff)? Those which are providing technical expertise on the project management and deployment.

17. What are the expectations for letter of commitment for proposed staff? Are the letters of commitment for the entire duration of the project? Would this include the option years? Letters of commitment should demonstrate that the key project management and deployment leaders are secured, so that we can evaluate their skills and past performance as it relates to forming an understanding of their competency.

18. What are the expectations for cabling/structured wiring? Can the Government clarify the scope of cabling tasks?

(i.e. Patch panels to the phone jacks, phone jacks to the phones, etc.). Existing cabling to be reused. There is no expectation of new cabling to be ran at the individual sites, this includes reusing the existing RJ-21 for the sites that have a VG310/VG320 to replace aging VG224s.

19. Can you please clarify the "partner branded support" requirement? Vendors must have a Cisco Gold Partner to assist in deploying this requirement.

20. Reference RFQ.pdf, page 6 “Must have the ability to provide partner branded support if requested. (provide proof of this program)”

Can this requirement be satisfied if the following requirement is met?

“QUOTES MUST INCLUDE A COPY OF THE AUTHORIZED DISTRIBUTOR LETTER OR OTHER FORM

OF EQUIPMENT VERIFICATION FROM THE MANUFACTURER TO VERIFY THE SOURCE OF THE

PRODUCTS BEING QUOTED.” The first citation is in reference to the Cisco Gold Partner relationship you are utilizing, and the second is a demonstration of authorized Cisco pricing for the products, as opposed to gray market pricing.

21. Would the Government consider extending the response due date which would allow vendors to adjust their response based on the answer provided by the Government? The due date for quotes has been extended to

08/24/2022.

22. Are all sites tax exempt? Yes, see attached exemption letter.

23. What is the appropriate NAICS code and size standard? This solicitation was released under 541519; however, if there is a NAICS code that you think better applies, please be cognizant of the size standard for the socio-economic business designation for which you are submitting your quote. Please identify the NAICS code for which you are submitting your quote under.

24. Are any managed services intended to be a part of this? None

25. Please expand on the training desired. Is this knowledge transfer at the end of the project, or is this expected to be ongoing? Knowledge transfer at end of project.

26. Please expand on the corporate experience. Is this meant to be in addition to past performance? It should speak to your technical and managerial ability to execute the technical functions, along with the project management oversight to ensure a smooth deployment.

27. We see an additional 1400 voice mailbox licenses added on top of the standard number IHS will get as part of their

Flex licensing agreement, 1680 (1400 + 20% overage allotment). Does IHS want to buy an additional 1400 voice mailbox licenses? No, this was a mistake; please disregard.

28. The A-Flex-3-FedRAMP licenses default as a 1-year subscription. Does IHS want to a 1 year base with 4 options on the licensing or is HIS looking to purchase 5 years of licensing up front? All licensing should be for the full 5 years up front, smartnet for 5 years, phones get 1 year smartnet.

29. The Parker site has 16 CP-8821-K9-BUN wireless phones. That product goes end of sales on August 22, 2022. The new product is the CP-840-BUNK9 wireless phone. Would you prefer a price quote on the new model of the wireless LAN IP Phone, CP-840-BUNK9? Yes, please quote CP-840-BUN-K9.

30. As stated in the SOW regarding trash removal, can we utilize the customer onsite trash receptacle or do we need to take all the trash offsite when complete? Trash will need to be taken off site, the customer onsite trash receptacle is not to be used.

31. What is the business hours for the work and will there be a need for after-hours work? Bulk of the work can be done Monday-Friday 8-5, site cutovers will vary but most likely be after hours, determined on a site by site basis when the cutover dates are determined.

32. For the analog gateway terminations, is the customer locations built out with patch panels or punch down blocks

(66 or 110)? Current analog lines are using the current VG224 equipment patched with RJ-21 cable into the

VG224, this same RJ-21 will be used with the new analog gateways. The RJ-21 terminates to various 110 blocks or patch panels.

33. On 10 DNA licenses, the platform selected is a C8300-1N1S-6T. There are no C8300-1N1S-6T routers in the BOM.

Do we need to correct these platforms to match the routers ordered? Yes, please correct to the C8200.

34. All routers in the BOM have a TE Agent, there was a promo recently ended that included this agent for free. Do you still want this TE agent for a cost? TE is not needed and can be removed.

35. There is 1 router with a 2 port MFT and 32 channel DSP. All of the other 2 port MFT’s had 64 channel DSP’s. Do you want a 32 or 64 channel DSP for this router? There is a typo in line 507, the Part number is correct at PVDM-

4-64, the description should be 64-Channel DSP Module.

36. Is there any way to get existing InformaCast Advanced Quantities from the sites looking to consolidate? Does this number include basic paging licenses? Current licensing covers 1292 phones and 609 speakers. All speakers are covered under this, but all phones are not and need to be; this is perpetual licensing, some of it might not have current support contract in place though.

37. What are IHS’ Cisco Capital and/or Payment Plan expectations? No expectations.

38. Number of T1s per site (probably one or two)? Most sites have qty 1 T1 PRI, some have 2 or 3; the appropriate VWICs were added to the configuration for each site to accommodate the T1s.

39. Medium of connection from spokes to hub? Mixture of internal MPLS and IPSec tunnels to IHS. Fully routable, no port/IP restrictions.

40. Can everything be built in, configured and tested in Phoenix before shipping to final locations? Yes, but onsite support is still needed to deploy phones and other equipment. Have to be mindful of call and interoperability during migration. Sites that have been cutover to the new Call manager still need to have the ability to call sites that have not been cutover, so call routing would be adjusted on the fly as each site is cutover.

41. Who is the Cisco Sales Rep for this project? Mike Skalka, and he can be reached at: mskalka@cisco.com mailto:mskalka@cisco.com