REDACTED_Single_Source_Determination_CWMS_Developer_Test_Site_Redacted.pdf

Single Source Determination US Army Corps of Engineers, Sacramento District

FAR 13.106-1(b)(1), Simplified Acquisitions

1. Contracting Activity:

US Army Corps of Engineers, Sacramento District

US Army Corps of Engineers, Institue For Water Resources, Hydrologic Engineering Center.

609 Second Street, Davis, CA 95616

2. Description of Action.

Single Source Fixed-Price Contract. This single source determination is to provide the Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC) with the development and configuration of a testing platform and troubleshooting tools to be utilized by software developers for the Corps Water Management System (CWMS), as well as providing ongoing coordination, administration, and maintenance support for the service. These items and their quantities are described in the maintenance contract performance work statement.

3. The rationale or circumstances for limiting competition.

What is critical to the understanding of this determination is that the source code for the HEC software suite is kept closed as if in a proprietary state. These are not new software packages.

All these software packages are proprietary within HEC’s and RMA’s portfolio.

Resource Management Associates, Inc. (RMA) has been on the development teams of HEC- FDA Version 2.0 and the HEC-EFMSim, HEC-EFM Plotter, and HEC-RPT software since the inception of these various pieces of software. Their high level of understanding of the computational code is unique among available contractors. Performance by another contractor would necessitate lengthy and expensive interactions with government staff members, far exceeding available employee time and budget.

RMA brings a unique skill set which includes knowledge of water resources engineering in the context of the USACE mission in water resources planning and ecosystem analyses, and a high level knowledge of and experience with the computational code utilized for this work. RMA staff include professional engineers, mathematicians, and computer programmers who possess the programming skillset needed to support HEC-FDA and the EFM suite of ecotools. RMA has been instrumental in designing, developing, and supporting these software tools, and many of RMA’s staff possess over 15 years of experience working closely with HEC. As an example of the types of HEC software applications RMA is skilled in supporting, the HEC-EFMSim project started almost 10 years ago and consists of over two hundred thirty-thousand lines of code residing in over 1500 Java files. From a cost and time standpoint, the savings on maintenance tasks within this software package is tremendous due to the unique skillset RMA possesses to rapidly access key parts of this codebase and re-use key software components and common libraries.

In addition to their extensive knowledge of integrating civil engineering processes into advanced software applications, RMA is very experienced with HEC’s standard software development process, including use of Gemini, Jira and Perforce for cataloging and tracking bug fixes and delivering frequent developmental software builds.Performance of maintenance tasks by another contractor would necessitate a lengthy (one year or more) on-boarding process for the contractor to develop knowledge of and expertise in the programming codebases of these software programs. HEC would need to purchase multiple Gemini, Jira and Perforce licenses for contractor use and spend a significant amount of HEC staff time to integrate and educate the contractor into the standard HEC development workflow.

Mandatory on-boarding tasks would substantially increase the funding and time necessary to deliver basic maintenance to the HEC-FDA and EFM suite of ecotools. This could cause significant delays in product deliverables and increase the cost to the government, which would negatively affect HEC’s ability to maintain existing software that USACE districts rely on to execute their missions. As an example, HEC-FDA is USACE’s only certified planning tool used for significant US government investment decisions related to water resources infrastructure;

decisions that routinely involve investments on the order of millions or tens of millions of dollars. Delays in bug fixes for this critical software will have an extensive negative impact on USACE’s ability to support agency recommendations to Congress on national flood risk management infrastructure investments.

4. The statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition.

The Services Acquisition Reform Act of 2003 (41 U.S.C.§428a) as implemented by FAR 13.106(b)(1) – Single Source Certain Commercial Items.

5. Market Research (MR)

While working with CESPK-CT on awarding a single source SATOC, an Intent to Single Source was posted on FBO for a large IDIQ contract. No responses or capability statements were received. Calls were made to the five (5) highly potential vendors seeking feedback; the magnitude of the requirement was too much for these small businesses. To date, no other sources have written to express an interest.

A search of the Dynamic Small Business search engine with keyword “water resource” under NAICS code 541511 was conducted revealing 18 potential vendors. Each of the 18 potential vendors were contacted. Of the 18 vendors, none of them specialized in both software development/software engineering and hydrological engineering. When contacted the reasons cited by the companies were they dealt primarily in water resource consulting, hesitation regarding learning the coding, dealt primarily with training workforces, did not do software development, lacked modeling experience, and manpower issues.

6. Price estimate, including options, if applicable.

The total estimated dollar value is . The Subject Matter Expert (SME) looked at each task separately and the contract as a whole. This software development work can be completed in-house by software developers on the CWMS team. However, HEC is reaching out for assistance due to resource challenges at HEC and short deadlines to accomplish software development given funding cycles. The Government Cost Estimate (GCE) was based on the amount of time the SME thought would be required to research the existing code of all the programs and requested areas of support, design a solution to implement the requested software enhancements, implement the software changes, and test the new code to verify it functions correctly while not adversely affecting existing code. Verification with the team leads that the work within the Performance Work Statement (PWS) could be completed in-house and the hours to complete the tasks were reasonable.

7. Recommended source.

Resource Management Associates, Inc.

1756 Picasso Avenue Suite C Davis CA 95618-0559

DUNS: 076561893

(530) 564-7043