SSN_693JJ3-26-SS-0012.pdf

SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE (SSN)

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Multimodal Standards Development, Maintenance and

Related Activities

693JJ3-26-SS-0012

THIS IS A SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE, RELEASED PURSUANT TO FEDERAL

ACQUISITION REGULATION (FAR) PART 10: MARKET RESEARCH.

This Sources Sought Notice is issued solely for informational, market research, and planning purposes only and does not commit the Government to any further contract actions, i.e., solicitation and/or contract. Respondents are advised that the United States Government will not pay for any information or administrative cost incurred in responding to this Sources Sought Notice. Not responding to this Sources Sought Notice does not preclude participation in any future RFP that may be issued. Responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the U.S Government to form a binding contract.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) / Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is conducting market research to determine if there are any organizations capable of providing Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Multimodal Standards Development, Maintenance and Support Activities, in their entirety including the ability to build from existing standards to update or evolve content as well as develop new standards.

Requirement

1. Background

The Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Standards Program has been legislatively directed to work with Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) to develop non-proprietary standards to enable the integration of ITS technologies and enable a seamless transportation system. Herein describes the US Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) requirements for participation in the infrastructure standards portion of the ITS Standards Program. This effort is contracted for by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) on behalf of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology (OST-R) Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office (ITS-JPO).

2. Scope

The USDOT is pursuing further research in the development of new standards and modification of existing standards supporting interoperability and meeting performance requirements for multimodal ITS technologies and services. Multimodal transportation technologies and mobility services have seen significant advancements in the past decade. The development of standards for these technologies must be accelerated to support these modes and ensure that all travelers’ needs are addressed.

The Contractor will be responsible for the development, evolution, and validation of non-proprietary, consensus-based mobility standards. This SSN aims to identify entities capable of developing these mobility standards for integrating emerging technologies into a vendor-neutral ITS architecture. To accomplish this scope, USDOT anticipates the following activities:

Standards Development & Maintenance: Creating new and updating existing non-proprietary standards using a rigorous systems engineering process to ensure they meet evolving user needs and design requirements.

Consensus & Stakeholder Management: Leading an open, balanced, and transparent process that facilitates active participation from the public sector and industry through formal drafting, balloting, and voting.

Technical Validation: Overseeing the technical "ground-truthing" of standards, including the implementation, testing, verification, and validation of protocols to ensure they work in real-world applications.

Strategic Coordination: Aligning standards development with ongoing R&D, operational tests, and field deployments to identify gaps and inform future standard evolutions.

3. Objectives

The primary objective of this effort will be to develop, maintain, update and promote multimodal ITS standards. A secondary objective will be to support the deployment of multimodal ITS through the adoption and use of ITS standards. These efforts must be industry consensus based standards that include all key stakeholders, including mobility advocates, state and local transportation agencies, vendors and service providers. The following are mobility standards areas that the USDOT would like to address with this effort:

Complete Trips: Standards supporting the "Complete Trip" lifecycle, ensuring seamless transitions between all stages of a traveler’s journey and interoperability at major mobility access points.

Complete Streets & Path Continuity: Development of standards that ensure infrastructure continuity and data synchronization across the various domains of the "Complete Streets" framework.

Digital Curb Interfaces: Standards for digitizing the curb to enable real-time communication of regulatory changes, space occupancy, and automated booking/reservation services.

Multimodal Service Integration: Protocols for the secure exchange of real-time telemetry, vehicle diagnostics, and trip status between private mobility providers and municipal oversight authorities.

Center-to-Center (C2C) Interoperability: Enhancing data exchange interfaces between transportation management systems, private mobility managers, and regional logistics hubs.

Center-to-Traveler (C2T) Communications: Standardizing the flow of information from transit and logistics centers directly to traveler devices to ensure consistent, real-time user experiences.

4. Required Capabilities

The following capabilities are necessary to meet the project scope requirements and public sector needs.

The Contractor must:

Demonstrate the ability to manage multiple task orders simultaneously under a federal IDIQ-style contract structure, which includes:

Strategic Planning: Capability to author annual business plans that align with USDOT goals, including cost-benefit justifications and resource forecasting.

Rigorous Financial Control: Systems for granular reporting of labor hours and costs by subtask, including management of complex subcontracting tiers.

Process Governance: Expertise in project management processes, including risk mitigation, configuration management, and quality assurance.

Process Improvement: An established framework for identifying and rectifying inefficiencies in standards development workflows.

Have expertise in the lifecycle of ITS standards, which includes:

Lifecycle Expertise: Proficiency in both traditional waterfall (SRS, SDD, Design Reviews) and agile (User Stories, APIs, MVP, Continuous Integration) development models.

Pre-Standardization Engineering: Ability to perform "front-end" analysis, including drafting Concepts of Operations (ConOps) and High-Level System Requirements.

Architecture Alignment: Familiarity with systems architectures and the Architecture Reference for Cooperative and Intelligent Transportation (ARC-IT) to ensure national consistency.

Maintenance & Evolution: Capability to manage Change Request (CR) processes, schema augmentation (JSON/ASN.1), and maintaining backward compatibility between "Legacy" and "Extended" systems.

Demonstrate experience in the verification, validation and deployment of standards, which includes:

Verification & Static Analysis: Automated tools for checking schema conformance and logical consistency in machine-readable files.

Cybersecurity & Privacy: Capability to verify encryption/authentication requirements and validate data anonymization layers.

Field Evaluation: Ability to design and execute Field Operational Tests (FOTs) and demonstrations to measure end-to-end reliability in real-world urban environments.

Certification Frameworks: Experience creating automated validation scripts and data quality metrics to certify vendor-generated data.

Have experience bringing together different stakeholders to develop consensus-based standards which would include:

Consensus Mediation: Experience managing diverse stakeholder groups (cities, vendors, researchers) to reach agreement through formal drafting, balloting, and voting.

Public Sector Support: Administrative capacity to manage travel and per diem for public sector representatives to ensure adequate participation.

Collaborative Management: Ability to stand up and lead Collaboratives or Cohorts to prevent fragmented interpretations of the standards across different regions.

Be able to move the standard from a technical document to a deployed reality, including:

Developer Support: Ability to create highly technical tools such as API specifications, Postman Collections, and Reference Implementations.

Education & Outreach: Capability to develop curricula and deliver training to both engineers (implementation) and policy-makers (governance).

Marketing & Dissemination: Professional communication skills to design and execute industry outreach, seminars, and national conferences.

Have knowledge in the following specific ITS areas:

Digital Curb Management (MDS/CDS) V2X and Vehicle Automation Complete Trips / Complete Streets concepts Center-to-Center (C2C) and Center-to-Traveler (C2T) interfaces Multi-modal mobility services (Telemetry, vehicle health, and trip status)

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Issue Date: 04/28/2026

Response Due Date: 05/13/2026, 2:00pm Local Time (Washington, DC).

Submit responses electronically to malik.arnold@dot.gov; daniel.confer@dot.gov

Email Subject Line must include: “693JJ3-26-SS-0012 - Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Multimodal Standards Development, Maintenance and Related Activities”:

Format requirements are:

(1) An Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) file formatted to print on 8.5”x11” size paper.

(2) Not more than 15 pages in length.

(3) The total page count of 15 pages includes ALL information provided including the cover letter, table of contents and acronym list.

(4) Size 11 font or larger shall be used with the exception of tables and other graphics.

(5) Responses may include links or web addresses that demonstrate evidence of technical expertise (final reports, technical journals, peer reviewed papers, etc.)

Proprietary information submitted in response to this Sources Sought Notice will be protected from unauthorized disclosure as required by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). All proprietary markings should be clearly delineated. The respondent shall identify where data is restricted by proprietary or other rights and mark it accordingly.

The cover page should contain:

(1) Company/Organization name

(2) Primary Point of Contact

(3) Phone Number and Email Address

(4) UEI Number

(5) NAICS Code(s)

(6) Business Size (small or large in relation to NAICS code(s) listed above).

(7) Socioeconomic Business Status: 8(a), HUBZone, Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small

Business (SDVOSB), or Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB).

(8) Federal Supply Schedule (FSS/MAS) and OASIS+ Contract Number(s), as applicable

Scope Feedback: If desired, Sources Sought Notice respondents may also provide feedback on the overall intent and scope of this requirement.

Commerciality Feedback: The Government desires to make a determination regarding the commerciality of this requirement. Considering the definition of commercial services from the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul (RFO), does your firm consider this requirement to be commercial or non-commercial? Please explain why.

Commercial service means—

(1) Installation services, maintenance services, repair services, training services, and other services if—

(i) Such services are procured for support of a commercial product, as defined in this section regardless of whether such services are provided by the same source or at the same time as the commercial product; and

(ii) The source of such services provides similar services at the same time to the general public under terms and conditions similar to those offered to the Government;

(2) Services, including construction, of a type offered and sold competitively in substantial quantities in the commercial marketplace based on established catalog or market prices for specific tasks performed or specific outcomes to be achieved and under standard commercial terms and conditions. For purposes of these services—

(i) Catalog price means a price included in a catalog, price list, schedule, or other form that the manufacturer or vendor regularly maintains, customers can inspect, and states prices at which sales are currently, or were last, made to a significant number of buyers constituting the general public; and

(ii) Market prices means current prices that are established in the course of ordinary trade between buyers and sellers free to bargain and that can be substantiated through competition or from sources independent of the offerors; or

(3) A service referred to in paragraph (1) or (2) of this definition, even though the service is transferred between or among separate divisions, subsidiaries, or affiliates of a contractor.

5. Clarification of Sources Sought Notice Responses

To fully comprehend the information contained within a response to this Sources Sought Notice, there may be a need to seek further clarification from respondents. This clarification may be requested in the form of brief verbal communication by telephone; written communication;

electronic communication; or a request for a presentation of the response to a specific FHWA group or groups. FHWA reserves the right to seek additional information from respondents.