Sources Sought Notice 693JJ3-21-SS-0003.pdf

SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE 693JJ3-25-SS-0008 (MARKET RESEARCH)

for

Multi-Phase Study to Examine Long-Term Applicability and Transferability of Crash

Modification Factors

- Phase I: Feasibility Study and Groundwork

1. SUBMITTAL INFORMATION

ISSUE DATE: September 18, 2025

DUE DATE FOR RESPONSES: October 9, 2025

SUBMIT RESPONSES TO: Jerry.Danso@dot.gov and Megan.Mavis@dot.gov

SUBMIT QUESTIONS TO: Jerry.Danso@dot.gov and Megan.Mavis@dot.gov

See below Section 5 entitled “REQUESTED CONTENT OF RESPONSES TO THIS SOURCES

SOUGHT NOTICE (SSN)” for submittal content instructions.

2. INTRODUCTION

Potential Sources Sought. This is NOT a solicitation for proposals, proposal abstracts, or quotations. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is conducting a market survey to identify potential sources for an anticipated contract for Multi-Phase Study to Examine Long-

Term Applicability and Transferability of Crash Modification Factors - Phase I: Feasibility

Study and Groundwork. The purpose of this notice is to obtain information, for planning purposes, regarding: the availability and capability of qualified sources to perform the work.

Pursuant to 48 C.F.R. Part 10, the Government is conducting market research to:

• Determine what sources exist that are capable of satisfying the Government’s requirements listed below,

• Determine the capabilities of potential contractors,

• Determine the size and status of potential sources, and

• Determine the level of competition (i.e. 8(a), set-aside or full and open).

3. BACKGROUND

The FHWA Office of Acquisition and Grants Management intends to make an award firm fixed price to accomplish the work described herein. The purpose for this SSN is to conduct market research to identify potential offerors having an interest in, and the resources to accomplish the work. Consideration will be given to identifying small business concerns, including the sub-categories of SDVOSB, HUBZone, 8(a), SDB and woman-owned. The result of this market research will contribute to determining the method of procurement.

This document contains a draft scope of work. Your firm’s response regarding your firm’s experience and capabilities will be used to determine the availability of potential businesses, both large and small, and their capabilities in meeting the Government’s requirement.

mailto:Jerry.Danso@dot.gov mailto:Megan.Mavis@dot.gov mailto:Jerry.Danso@dot.gov mailto:Megan.Mavis@dot.gov

4. DRAFT SCOPE OF WORK

Multi-Phase Study to Examine Long-Term Applicability and Transferability of Crash

Modification Factors - Phase I: Feasibility Study and Groundwork

Background

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is an agency of nearly 3,000 federal employees within the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT). FHWA provides financial and technical support to State, local, tribal governments, and other entities, for constructing, improving, and preserving America’s highway system through the Federal-aid Highway and the Federal Lands Highway (FLH) Programs. The agency’s workforce is comprised of civil engineers, community planners, financial managers, environmental, human resources, realty, transportation specialists and others.

FHWA has a very robust learning and development program that strives to ensure every employee has the necessary corporate, technical, and leadership skills to carry out FHWA’s mission. The Talent Development Division (TDD) provides support to over 30 classes, including formal classroom training, webinars, hybrid, and virtual series. In addition, TDD provides program management for agency developed courses. These courses were created to train and prepare agency staff for future leadership opportunities.

The purpose of the Innovative & Exceptional Partnerships (IEP) leadership course is to provide an opportunity for current or aspiring Division Administrators or senior leaders to dialogue, receive feedback, ask questions and sharpen tools related to building effective partnerships with executive leaders from their State Department of Transportation (DOT), metropolitan planning organizations, and other key transportation stakeholders. .

This course is different from any other FHWA courses in that historically it has been co-facilitated by a former State DOT chief executive officer (CEO). The agenda for this 3-day course has included a panel of State DOT CEOs and FHWA Division Administrators who share best partnership practices and a review of case studies of past/existing challenges between partners, among other partnership topics and exercises.

The instructional and content development services for the IEP courses will be used to offer a single course offering in FY24 and potentially a course offering in FY26. At FHWA, the philosophy is “leadership is everyone’s business,” making the IEP course vital to employees’ success with their partners. FHWA values relationships where leaders, individuals, and agencies work closely together to efficiently achieve goals that are mutually beneficial and cannot be achieved alone. FHWA believes that partnerships produce better results, increase accountability to the public for outcomes, and allows for greater flexibility as to how services are designed and delivered.

The course also includes an Emotional Intelligence (EI) training, which FHWA staff will conduct.

➢ Objective

To support FHWA mission to improve safety on our nation’s roadways. Within this broader goal are two objectives in accordance with 23 U.S.C. §503(b)(1)(A, B, C & D); 23 U.S.C.

§503(b)(2)(B)(iii, v & vi); 23 U.S.C. §503(b)(2)(C)(i, ii, iii); and 23 U.S.C. §503(b)(3)(B)(i & ii):

I. Determine how to assess longevity and transferability of CMFs and identify information needed to conduct assessment.

II. Examine gaps and challenges related to the data needed to examine CMF longevity and transferability and other future safety study (e.g., estimating nationwide impact of installed safety infrastructure in terms of number of reduced crashes and saved casualties).

➢ Detailed Requirements

The Contractor shall provide all personnel, equipment, supplies, facilities, transportation, tools, materials, supervision, and other items and non-personal services necessary to perform this task order.

TASK 1: Project Management

The Contractor shall coordinate and facilitate a virtual kickoff meeting with the FHWA

Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) and other FHWA stakeholders within three weeks of award of the task order. The purpose of the kickoff meeting is to discuss the overall project to ensure desired outcomes are achieved. The Contractor shall prepare a draft work plan that is consistent with the proposal and includes, at a minimum, the proposed schedule and deliverables.

The Contractor shall prepare an agenda and presentation to guide the meeting. The Contractor shall send the draft agenda, presentation, and work plan to the COR one week in advance of the kickoff meeting, at the latest, for review. After the kickoff meeting, the Contractor shall incorporate all feedback received into the work plan to be submitted to the COR for review and feedback.

NOTE: The Work Plan shall be consistent with the performance work statement and all exhibits, which address how CMF longevity and transferability will be defined and assessed and what data will be needed for the assessment. The Work Plan shall not be construed to override or change the requirement or exhibits of this performance work statement. The controlling document for the requirement shall be the performance work statement, its exhibits, and any modifications issued. The Contractor shall participate in regular check-in meetings (frequencies to be determined after the kickoff meeting) with the COR and FHWA’s stakeholders to discuss the progress, possible risks, and opportunities under this study. The Contractor shall prepare quarterly progress reports (QPRs) with risk assessment for this task.

TASK 1 Deliverables:

Contractor shall submit the following to the COR for review and approval:

• Kickoff meeting agenda, draft work plan, and draft presentation.

• Meeting notes and presentations.

• Revised work plan.

• Regular check-in meetings.

• Quarterly progress reports.

TASK 2: Conduct Literature Review, Gap Analysis and Feasibility Study

The Contractor shall conduct literature review regarding CMF longevity and transferability to see if any studies have looked into these topics and what research gaps and challenges exist.

Additionally, the Contractor shall explore existing databases that store traffic and infrastructure project related data collected from a large number of states (at least 20 States), such as, but not limited to, Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS) and Highway Safety

Improvement Program database. The Contractor shall examine gaps and challenges related to that those databases are combined with crash data and used for nation-level safety evaluations

(e.g., conducting before-and-after studies). The Contractor shall also investigate in what format

(e.g., paper, spreadsheet, or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) map) each state currently develops and maintains safety infrastructure databases (e.g., median barrier, roundabout, rumble strips) and whether they can be integrated with data from different sources (e.g., crash data, traffic data) for more comprehensive information. The existing data gaps and challenges examined in this study may include but not limit to availability, quality, alignments between datasets within a state, data fusion with multiple sources, varying definitions/categorizations of same types of variables among states, etc.

Based upon findings from the literature review and gap analysis, the Contractor shall also conduct a risk assessment of project completion and identify opportunities to narrow the gaps and to proceed with data collection for augmenting the existing databases for future studies. This task seeks to better understand what challenges and gaps hinder conducting large scale (ideally national level) safety evaluations.

TASK 2 Deliverables:

Contractor shall submit the following to the COR for review and approval:

• Technical memo for literature review, gap analysis, and research needs.

• Technical memo for feasibility study

• Revised work plan based on findings from the literature review, gap analysis, feasibility study that includes a data collection plan with collection period.

TASK 3: Data Collection

Upon approval from the COR, the Contractor shall acquire information on State crash data, GIS files of safety infrastructure related data, and other data to be used in future traffic safety studies including, but not limited to assessment of CMF longevity and transferability and nationwide impact of safety infrastructure countermeasures. The Contractors shall also explore existing databases (e.g., Fatal Analysis Reporting System, Highway Safety Information System, HPMS, federal agencies’ other internal databases, etc.) for use of this purpose. Additionally, the

Contractors shall contact all States and request all necessary files (population data, not sample data) to complete this task.

The Contractor shall produce summary information to display what is available in each State in terms of data type (e.g., crash data, infrastructure data, etc.) and information type for each data type (e.g., crash severity, infrastructure installation date). The Contractor shall also include

States, which are determined to have no applicable GIS infrastructure mapping information available. Based upon the results of this effort, the Contractor shall discuss with the COR and

FHWA’s stakeholders and determine which infrastructures and States would be selected for the

TASK 4 – developing databases for future traffic safety studies.

TASK 3 Deliverables:

The Contractor shall submit the following to the COR for review and approval:

• Data available for at least past 7 to 8 years from 2023 or 2024 obtained from all States, which include the following at a minimum:

o Crash data. The Contractor shall check each State’s compliance status of

MMUCC and provide the summary.

o Infrastructure map files (or State data with beginning and end point location information used to determine infrastructure locations, if GIS asset map layers or similar files are not available), to determine which safety infrastructure types exist at the crash location. The Contractor shall include map files focusing on the following categories at a minimum: longitudinal barriers, shoulder width, rumble strips, curve delineations, high friction surface treatment, and roundabouts.

o Other data related to above-listed safety infrastructure, such as, but not limited to, installation date and specifications of infrastructure – for example, for rumble strips, the information about types (standard or sinusoidal), widths, installation methods (milled, rolled, raised, etc.), etc.

o Involvement of those infrastructure types in crashes, based on the police crash report, crash type, crash location, infrastructure location, and other applicable data. For example, the Contractor may use a distance between front the crash and the safety infrastructure to determine the involvement of the infrastructure in the crash.

o Roadway characteristics and traffic inventory data. The Contractor shall check each State’s compliance status of MIRE and provide the summary.

o Other data needed for safety evaluations, if available, such as pedestrian volumes and turning movement counts.

• Inventory of infrastructure information for each infrastructure category where mapping data do or do not exist, by State, with State names, contact information for State GIS leader, GIS file information, infrastructure variable and category names, and overall data quality categories for each State (e.g., poor, acceptable, good, exceptional).

o Include year which State produced the maps and additional relevant data details.

• Inventory of State crash data information, including contact information for crash data, crash data file names, information on availability of State crash data files, overall crash data quality categories (e.g., poor, acceptable, good, exceptional), existence (yes/no) of latitude/longitude of crash data to allow for locating crashes and merging with mapped infrastructure information, infrastructure data from police crash report to augment mapping information.

• Inventory of roadway characteristics and traffic inventory where mapping data do or do not exist, by State, with information on overall data quality categories for each State (e.g., poor, acceptable, good, exceptional), and contact information for the data acquisition.

• Inventory of other data information for each data category (e.g., pedestrian volumes, weather data, etc.) where mapping data do or do not exist, by State, with information on overall data quality categories for each State (e.g., poor, acceptable, good, exceptional) and contact information for the data acquisition.

• Technical memo summarizing data collection efforts, gaps and challenges encountered while performing this task, and broad data quality assessment results. One of section in this memo shall discuss recommendation of the best infrastructure types and States for

TASK 4 based on data availability and data quality. The number of infrastructure types and States in the list shall be maximized.

TASK 4: Development of Databases for Assessment of CMF Longevity and Transferability

The Contractor shall merge crash data, selected infrastructure mapping data, roadway characteristics, traffic inventory data, and other collected data of selected States (from TASK 3) using primary keys and develop databases for future traffic safety studies. These databases shall be used to produce layers of maps for collected data and determine the involvement (yes/no) of safety infrastructure of interest in the crashes. HPMS has annual collected state roadway network in GIS format. The Contractor may consider this as a basemap

(https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/hpms.cfm).

TASK 4 Deliverables:

The Contractor shall submit the following to the TOCOR for review and approval:

• Database(s) that produce layers of crash data map, infrastructure data maps, roadway characteristics map, traffic inventory map, and maps of other collected data for future traffic safety studies. The data in different domains should be linked to each other using primary keys.

• Technical memo summarizing database development efforts, gaps and challenges encountered while performing this task, and broad quality assessment results about data included in the final product (database(s)).

TASK 5: Documentation of Database Manual, Data Library and Dictionary for Future

Usage

At the completion of this project, a data library, which is a tabular version of the summary information regarding the developed database and collected data, shall be produced for each

State. This information shall include all new findings, for each infrastructure type, including but not limited to:

• Data quality (e.g., rumble strips are well mapped for all State-owned roads in State X, or poor roundabouts mapping quality prevented use of State Y’s roundabouts data due to

[Fill in blank]).

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/hpms.cfm

• Variable information for infrastructure types analyzed (including related files names, variable names, utilized category names and numbers).

• Data sources which can be used to locate this variable information, such as Open Data links for States with publicly available GIS maps, Excel Spreadsheets for States with mapping information in spreadsheets, and points-of-contact for GIS leaders in States.

• Percent of crashes can be mapped by year (e.g., 27 percent of crashes occurred on State roads where safety infrastructure is mapped).

• Percent of roadway for which infrastructure GIS maps exist (e.g., 100 percent of State-owned roads have existing concrete barriers mapped, and this represents an estimated 22 percent of this State’s total roads, and over 95 percent of existing concrete barriers).

• Percent of other collected data can be mapped by year (e.g., 56 percent of Annual

Average Daily Traffic are mapped on State roads).

“Notes” which shall be included in mapping information results can include statements like

“State X was determined to not only have data Y but also have data Z, which will be used for this report.” The summary information for each State, such as the date that the infrastructure map file was last updated, infrastructure types mapped, and additional helpful information, shall be included for each State. If States are determined to not have any mapping information for infrastructure, and/or no beginning and end point data recorded in any format, then that information shall also be included, along with contact information of the mapping supervisor in each State and/or State employee mapping expert most familiar with GIS mapping, or website which provided that information. This information is intended to be used to efficiently update this project in later years with future years of crash data and mapping data, or to expand this project to include additional infrastructure types beyond the types used in this project.

The Contractor shall store these data files in a location (to be determined by COR) for future updates and future usage, organize the data and databases, and produce a User Manual and Data

Dictionary for others at FHWA to use in later years. This is intended to prepare for and improve efficiency of updates for future traffic safety analyses, or other to-be-determined use of these mappings of infrastructure and crashes. This will allow future projects to efficiently use this existing data, and efficiently collect similar data in future years.

TASK 5 Deliverables:

The Contractor shall submit the following to the COR for review and approval:

• Organized data:

o State mapping files (including beginning and endpoint data used to produce maps) utilized in this project.

o State police crash report manuals and data files utilized in this project.

o Other data files collected for and utilized in this project.

o Established State crash data and GIS infrastructure map storage patterns, such that

GIS files and State crash data can be efficiently used and updated for use in future research projects on CMF longevity and transferability, impact of safety countermeasures, or other topics.

• Documentation including Data library, dictionary, and user manual for others to use in future years.

3. PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE

The period of performance shall be for a period of 15 months from date of award.

4. REQUESTED CONTENT OF RESPONSES TO THIS SOURCES SOUGHT

NOTICE (SSN)

This SSN is not to be construed as a commitment on the part of the Government to award a contract or cooperative agreement nor does the Government intend to directly pay for any information or responses submitted as the result of this SSN. Interested parties, who consider their firms qualified to perform the above-listed services, are invited to submit responses to this

SSN.

Any interested organizations are invited to submit a Capability Statement to the identified

Contracting Officer/Specialist via email by the response date.

Responses shall clearly identify:

1. Name, Address, Point of Contact;

2. Size Standard under NAICS code 611430 – Professional and Management Development

Training (size standard is $15.0 Million);

3. Identify all applicable classifications for your organization, such as:

a. Small Business?

b. Woman-owned business?

c. 8(a) business?

d. Large business

e. Small disadvantaged business

f. HUBZone business?

g. SDVOB business?

h. Non-profit?

4. Description of technical capabilities and relevant experience to perform the work described in Section 4 of this document;

5. Synopsis of experience and expertise of potential staff;

6. Relevant projects completed related to the anticipated objectives of the project with information on the client, scope, and products; and

7. Description of available facilities to perform the work outlined above.

The Capability Statement shall be no more than ten (10) pages in length single-spaced with font size twelve or larger.

To support the Government’s review of the Contractor’s technical ability, the following questions should be directly addressed:

a. What experience do you have with planning and implementing projects to restore or reconnect communities that have been divided or otherwise harmed by transportation infrastructure such as highways and rail lines?

b. What experience do you have designing transportation planning and community development curriculum?

c. What is your experience in community engagement practices and how could they apply to the transportation planning process?

d. What is your familiarity with federal funding requirements?

e. What is your experience with data collection to inform program evaluation?

f. What is your experience with identifying and applying for project financing?

5. NOTES

PARTICIPATION IN THE MARKET RESEARCH IN NO WAY INFLUENCES THE

SOURCE SELECTION FOR THESE SERVICES. This SSN is not to be construed as a commitment on the part of the Government to award a contract, nor does the Government intend to directly pay for any information or responses submitted as the result of this SSN. As a result of this Market Research, FHWA intends to issue a solicitation at SAM.GOV or eBUY.gov.