Sources Sought_PARTS.pdf

Solicitation Number:

TBD

Notice Type:

Sources Sought

1.0 Background

The U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT), John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (Volpe Center), Cambridge, MA, is conducting market research to identify Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC) for the continued Partnership for Analysis and Research in Traffic Safety (PARTS) research between the Volpe Center, USDOT, OEMs, to serve as the trusted third party responsible to maintain and execute research per the PARTS Governance board. This Sources Sought Notice does not constitute a solicitation and is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government. The Government will not pay for any effort expended in responding to this notice.

2.0 Description

The FFRDC will be responsible for supporting the Government in the following areas:

Task 1: Project Management

A. The Contractor shall schedule and hold a kick-off meeting with the Contractor team, COR and relevant federal staff as needed. The COR shall identify relevant federal participants; the Contractor shall host the meeting in person or virtually. The Contractor shall develop a Project Work Plan (PWP) for completing the contract with detailed intermediate steps. The PWP shall include information on proposed research questions, data sources, and anticipated outcomes and publications. The PWP shall be discussed during the kick-off meeting and relevant updates shall be incorporated into the PWP. These topics will be refined and updated in Task 4.

Deliverable: Project Work Plan

B. The Contractor shall provide monthly progress briefings to the government. The progress briefing shall include an outline of activities completed and in progress, costs, and project risks. Questions to the government shall be included for further project clarification.

Deliverable: Monthly briefings

Task 2: Maintain and Mature Partnership

A. The Contractor shall act as the steward of the governance rules and enforce them as appropriate to maintain the effective and efficient operation of PARTS activities and retain the trust and cooperation of all participants. The Contractor shall appropriately document rules, norms, and expectations related to the operation of PARTS, as well as capture lessons learned related to governance. The Contractor shall also collaborate with all participants to identify updates and amend the existing Cooperative Agreement and Governance Agreement, as needed, to support the objectives of the PARTS activities.

B. The Contractor shall maintain the PARTS Governance Agreement, and work with the partners to manage the scope of the agreement to permit the execution of this contract as well as broaden the terms of the Governance Agreement as needed to adequately mature the PARTS governance structure. This may include the management of a governance board and other working groups.

C. The Contractor shall update the cooperative agreements between itself and the OEM Participants, as needed, to align with the updated PARTS Governance Agreement, as well as making any necessary changes to perform the work in this contract. This may include the formation and management of an ad hoc working group, as needed.

D. The Contractor shall work with the government and OEM participants to identify potential future participants for the PARTS Phase II project beyond the current partnership, as needed. These potential Participants shall be organizations that would contribute to further understanding the safety performance of ADAS and other motor vehicle technologies. For identified potential future participants that meet these criteria, the Contractor shall work with the COR and OEM participants to initiate a dialogue with the identified organizations.

E. If accepted, the Contractor shall work to onboard the new participant, minimizing the burden on current participants. Onboarding includes the development of new cooperative agreements with the future participants, and the assistance in incorporating these participants into the PARTS governance structure. For interested organizations, the Contractor shall develop new cooperative agreements with the future participants and assist in incorporating these participants into the PARTS governance agreement structure.

Deliverable: Updated governance, cooperative, and additional agreed upon agreement documents.

Task 3: Ingest, Aggregate, De-Identify, and Maintain Partner Data

As a collaborative data sharing partnership, the PARTS program requires the identification and defining of data in collaboration with the OEM participants to perform analyses. As such, the work requires continuous communication between the Contractor and PARTS participants. The Contractor shall communicate with the government and OEM participants as needed to execute the technical analyses.

This may include the formation and management of ad hoc working groups. The government will provide subject matter expertise and technical assistance to the contractor to complete the program. Such assistance includes providing guidance on how to effectively conduct data quality assessments on OEM data that will not be shared with the government and may have sensitivities around revealing specific OEM data, identifying publicly available data sources that may be useful for analysis, and assisting in determining the extent of the utility of those data for the purposes of analysis.

A. The Contractor shall receive data from the government and incorporate the data. The government shall provide data to the contractor that includes, but is not limited to: Consolidated State Crash data (CSC) received through the Electronic Data Transfer (EDT), Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), and Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS). The data shall be adequately incorporated when they are in a data structure that can export data to the format required for analysis.

B. The Contractor shall receive new vehicle data from non-government partners and incorporate the data into a merged data structure, data to be ingested shall be jointly agreed upon by partners. The Contractor shall work with the government in consultation with the OEM participants to identify vehicle data to incorporate. The Contractor shall coordinate with each partner to establish the transfer processes, data mapping or/or decoding, data validation and quality control then execute the workflow for all agreed upon data to the program’s data model. The data shall be adequately incorporated when they are in a data structure that can export data required to complete program objectives. Governance agreements, and cooperative agreements between the Contractor and non- USDOT participants that are separate from this Contract, shall be used as guidelines for data sharing, use, and data protections.

C. The Contractor shall develop a data management plan and architecture to be used for the contract.

The plan, at a minimum, shall consider the formulation and development of:

o A collaboration platform and sharing tools;

o A data access portal that enables controlled access and data segregation;

o Interactive dashboards, including web-enabled software applications;

o Automated data pipelines, a data repository, and other user needs as identified by partners.

Deliverable: Project memorandum describing the data management plan and data architecture.

Task 4: Data Analysis

The contractor shall provide a structure for all partners to inform the analyses and research to be performed by the contractor using modern data science and statistical analysis methods. As such, the analysis execution shall require continuous communication between the Contractor and the PARTS participants. This may include the formation and management of an ad hoc working group or groups. The Contractor shall communicate with all partners as needed to execute the analyses.

The partners, including USDOT, may request that the Contractor work within the partnership to perform exploratory analysis and studies that support core analyses, i.e. adding context and background detail, or are completed separately from the core analyses. The Contractor shall work within the principles established by the PARTS governance board to execute a shared analytic arrangement while still retaining de-identification and anonymization of all sensitive data. The government reserves the right to either exercise these tasks, or work with a separate entity to conduct the analyses.

A. The Contractor shall develop an analytical plan and identify methodologies for each planned analysis. The Contractor shall solicit input from the government and selected OEM participants to develop the plan, as needed the Contractor shall create a working group to facilitate this effort.

The Analytical Plan shall describe the issues, opportunity areas, and research questions to be examined under this contract. The plan shall include, at a minimum:

o Path to performing analysis on vehicle technologies;

o Data sets and information sources to consider for use;

o Research questions or topic areas and methodologies proposed to investigate each;

o Proposals for additional proof-of-concept studies.

B. The Contractor shall complete the analyses established in the analytical plan in partnership with all self-selected partners.

C. The Contractor shall develop a comprehensive draft report of the analytical work performed and results. The report shall also include, at a minimum, sections on lessons learned, an assessment of whether the success criteria developed were met, and areas for further research identified. To the extent possible within the Governance Agreement, the report should document research topics or issues for discussion in future PARTS work that are of interest to the industry and were not investigated in the execution of this contract. For success criteria identified as being partially or not met, the report shall identify what would need to be done to meet those criteria in the future.

The Contractor shall share the draft report to the government and other partners for review and edits. The COR shall provide feedback on the draft.

D. The Contractor shall incorporate the edits provided by all partners into the draft report and produce a final version describing the work performed. The following portions of the report are intended to be made public: aggregate results, areas for further research identified, lessons learned, and opportunities related to future PARTS analyses. The public parts of the final report shall acknowledge "This publication was supported by the U.S. Department of Transportation under Contract [contract number]."

Deliverable: Publication ready final research report.

Task 5: Communications, Outreach & Reporting

A. The Contractor shall convene four or more all-hands meetings between all PARTS participants, future participants, and associated organizations. Meetings shall be hosted by the Contractor, or at a participant’s site. At a minimum, the all-hands meeting shall update the PARTS activity participants on the work performed to date, next steps, challenges in performing Task Requirements, and opportunity areas to further discuss. Meetings shall include discussion of any governance issues or other issues that come up that would affect PARTS activities. The Contractor shall work with the COR in the development of the all-hands meetings, and the Contractor shall have at least one federal official attend each meeting.

B. The Contractor shall present orally four or less briefings to senior USDOT executives, in coordination with the COR:

o Brief the analysis plan to federal officials, based on their input, work with the COR to revise the Work and Analysis Plans, as needed.

o Brief the results to date as an interim oral briefing to senior USDOT executives. Before briefing USDOT executives the Contractor shall provide a draft to the COR for review and approval. Based on the input from the briefing, the Contractor shall work with PARTS participants to refine the activities to fulfill the Task Requirements, as needed.

o Brief the final results to key USDOT executives. Before briefing senior USDOT executives the Contractor shall provide a draft to the COR for review and approval.

C. Upon approval by the Governance Board, the Contractor shall provide support for external communications on behalf of PARTS activities, including but not limited to:

o Coordinating Communications Committee meetings and managing software to share information;

o Developing and revising information for external engagement and consumption;

o Assisting in the creation of content for a broader audience such as a public-facing website;

o Reviewing and publishing press releases developed by USDOT and OEM participants;

o Presenting at conferences and events about the PARTS program; and o Supporting information needs to be used to recruit new participants.

Note: NHTSA will be primarily responsible for the execution of the external communications, and the Contractor role will be supporting in nature. NHTSA shall, to the extent necessary:

o Manage the external-facing PARTS website and lead the creation of website content; and

D. Develop and revise materials for external engagement and consumption. The Contractor shall facilitate the development of success criteria. The COR, and OEM participants shall develop the success criteria through the Contractor's facilitation. The final success criteria shall be approved by the COR in consultation with OEM Participants. Once approved, the Contractor shall track the progress of the success criteria and provide status updates during the all-hands meetings.

Deliverable: Briefing materials, external communication materials and supporting conference materials

3.0 Submission Instructions

Interested Federally Funded Research and Development Centers must submit a written Statement of Capabilities of sufficient detail demonstrating their experience and have the ability to provide said services at multiple, simultaneous sites, nationwide as it relates to relevant past performance (previous or current experience for the past five (5) years).

Capability information shall include: Contract number; Customer (Government agency, private industry);

Contracting Officer's Representative (COR) name, telephone and fax numbers; contract value and type of contract; period of performance; and description of product/services. Information provided shall be detailed and shall show technical capabilities, knowledge, and expertise so the Government can assess the ability to provide the described services in each of the above stated work areas.

All the information sought should be conveyed in no more than five (5) pages. Page size is set at 8 X 11 and text should be no smaller than 11 point. Each response must reference the Sources Sought title.

Interested parties must respond to this announcement in writing by September 4, 2024 at 4:00 pm Eastern Time. Telephone requests will not be honored. All responses must be submitted via e-mail to Andrew Josephs at Andrew.Josephs@dot.gov. Electronic attachments to the e-mail should be submitted in Microsoft Office 2007 (or later) productivity application formats, or any format that can be imported by Microsoft Office.

4.0 Information Availability

THIS NOTICE IS NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL. This notice is for information and planning purposes only, and is a market research tool to determine the availability and adequacy of potential FFRDCs prior to determining the method of acquisition and possible issuance of a Request for Proposal.

The notice does not constitute a solicitation for bids, quotations, and proposals, and is not to be construed as a commitment by the Government. The information provided herein is subject to change and in no way binds the Government to solicit for or award a competitive contract. The Government is not obligated to and will not pay for any information received from potential sources as a result of response to this Sources Sought notice. The Government will not pay for any materials provided in response to this synopsis and submittals will not be returned to the sender. Submissions must be disclosable to the public or the submitter should provide a summary statement that can be disclosed to the public with fuller supporting information that is clearly marked as restricted. The Government will use customary means to safeguard proprietary information, but only when such information is (1) clearly marked as proprietary;

(2) is, in fact, information that could not have been obtained from another party or source; and (3) is otherwise deserving of such treatment under standards and processes described in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Executive Order 12600.

For information about the Volpe Center refer to the Volpe Center website at http://www.volpe.dot.gov.