Sole_Source_Justification_redacted_1.pdf

Sole Source Justification

PR 40673699

1. Contracting Agency and Activity. The Department of the Interior, United States Geological Survey plans to contract by means other than full and open competition. This document sets forth the justification and approval for award of a contract on a limited source basis as required by FAR 13.501(a) and 13.106-1 (b)(1).

2. Nature of Action Being Approved. A for-cost extension is being issued on contract 140G0322P0228 to Instrumental Software Technologies, Inc. for software development in support of the ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning System. The extension covers the period 09/01/2024 – 12/31/2024.

3. Description of Supplies or Services. The services are software programming using the existing functions of the ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning system. The requiring program office is the Earthquake Science Center, Earthquake Early Warning project.

4. Estimated Dollar Value.

5. Statutory Authority. The proposed action may be awarded on a sole source basis under the authority of Section 201 of the Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949 (40 USC 501) and FAR 13.501(a) and 13.106-1 (b)(1) – only one source reasonably available.

6. Rationale Supporting Use of Citation in No. 5. The project involves developing a database and transitioning the ShakeAlert System Testing and Performance (STP) software into an architecture that works in a cloud based environment, specifically AWS(CHS).

Instrumental Software Technologies, Inc. (ISTI) has developed much of the key seismic data handling software that the ShakeAlert System is built on. They are the only company with an existing knowledge of the STP architecture ActiveMQ messaging schema that ShakeAlert is dependent on and which forms the basis for the cloud migration, software, and infrastructure work currently under development. Additionally, they wrote the primary software that the offline STP testing platform uses (named tankplayer) to simulate system performance in past earthquakes. In addition, under contract 140G0322P0228, ISTI has performed much of the migration of the STP testing platform into the USGS CHS (Cloud Hosting Services) environment. This work, begun under the existing contract is roughly 80% complete. Bringing in another contractor at this point in the migration would cause significant loss of time because the new contractor would need to pick up an active project, train their staff on the project implementation, and then complete it. The USGS ShakeAlert team estimates this training process would take four to six months, nearly doubling the estimated time to completion if the contract extension is issued to ISTI. In addition to this added time, the USGS would have to pay the new contractor for the time it took them to train their staff, at least doubling the cost of completing the final 20% of this project.

We note that the original time and cost estimate for the work to be done under 140G0322P0228 turned out to be incorrect. There were significant unanticipated delays on the part of USGS CHS in setting up the proper environment, as well as delays in their responses to requests for features required to support the STP migration project, both of which caused delays in ISTI’s work. To keep the project moving forward as swiftly as possible, ISTI did some development work in a regularly-available commercial AWS environment while waiting for USGS CHS to provide the resources necessary for migration. Unfortunatley, it was discovered after the fact that the USGS CHS environment has significant differences from the regularly-available commercial AWS environment, necessitation some reworking of the code and complete retesting. While ISTI’s work outside the USGS CHS environment was necessary to partially mitigate schedule delays, it also added work that was completed under the initial contract, but prevented ISTI from completing the remaining items from the original statement of work. Those remaining items will be completed under this extension.

No new work is being proposed under this modification. Roughly 20% of the originally-proposed work STP cloud migration work remains to be completed. This modification will allow for completion of that work, which is all under the original scope of the initial award. ISTI is uniquely positioned to complete this project in an efficient and timely manner. Since ISTI is already well acquainted with the ShakeAlert system, and has completed 80% of the STP migration to the USGS CHS environment, awarding this contract to them will ensure the remaining work is completed as rapidly as possible.

7. Other Information. N/A.

8. The Efforts to Identify Additional Sources Including the Market Research Conducted.

RFI 140G0322Q0162 was posted on SAM.gov to seek any and all potential contractors capable of meeting the requirement described in the published SOW, receiving no responses by the close date.

9. Actions to Overcome Barriers to Competition. To the level most practicable, the USGS will attempt to seek new and or additional sources for future services.

10. Recommendation and Certification from Program Office

Based on the above, I recommend this acquisition be conducted on a sole source basis and certify the above statements are true and accurate.

Project Mgr Signature Date

11. Certifications from the Contracting Officer:

a. Price will be determined fair and reasonable in accordance with FAR 13.106-3.

b. This justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.