B08.03 Questions and Answers - Solicitation No. W912HQ24R0007 dated 2024.02.28.docx

Question 1:

Document: B08.02_W912HQ24R0007_dated_2024.01.17.pdf Page: 28 Section: L 3.1.2 Factor 2 – Organizational Management and Personnel Availability Question: The solicitation states “Offerors shall submit a written narrative proposal which describes and demonstrates the Offeror’s technical understanding and approach to satisfy the support needs of the USACE Hydrologic Engineer Center as outlined in the MATOC PWS (Attachment 1). In the document “A02.12_PWS_IWR_HEC_MATOC_dated_20231206.docx” the section titled “Description of Services” content outlining “typical services,” “examples of typical tasks,” and “example tasks.” It isn’t explicitly clear which section of the MATOC PWS outlines the support needs required in the technical approach write-up. Can the government confirm which section or paragraph of “A02.12_PWS_IWR_HEC_MATOC_dated_20231206.docx” includes the support needs of the PWS offerors should write against for Section 3.1.2 Factor 2 outlined above?

Answer: With this MATOC, the USACE HEC is looking for assistance with software development tasks, water resources studies, and/or training. Therefore, we are interested in understanding the Offeror’s capabilities in each area. The typical services section of the MATOC PWS refers to the software we typically develop, use, and provide training for. Therefore, the 17 typical tasks of the MATOC PWS refers to example tasks we may ask the offerors to do for us. The example tasks further define the types of tasks we may request. The offerors should describe their experience with the identified software and the typical and example tasks. We want to evaluate whether you are familiar with the software and if so, what software development capabilities do you have, what software implementation experience do you have, and what type of training have you performed, or are capable of performing. Therefore, we are asking offerors to respond to all three sections of the MATOC PWS: Typical Services, Typical Tasks, and Example Tasks.

Question 2:

Document: A02.12_PWS_IWR_HEC_MATOC_dated_20231206.docx / A02.12_PWS_for_Example_Task_Order.docx Page: 8 / 13 Section: Appendix A – Labor Categories – Tasks and Qualifications / Appendix A – Labor Categories Question: The document “A02.12_PWS_IWR_HEC_MATOC_dated_20231206.docx” the government lists 18 LCATs (Appendix A – 1.1 through 1.18) but the LCATs listed in “A02.12_PWS_for_Example_Task_Order.docx” includes LCATS that are not included in the MATOC PWS (Example Task Order PWS has “Senior Principal Investigator, Research Assistant” but the MATOC PWS does not), and many of the LCATs have slightly different titles (Principal Investigator vs Principal, Programmer/Analyst vs Senior or Junior Software Analyst/Programmer).

Answer: The LCATs in “A02.12_PWS_for_Example_Task_Order.docx” were updated to match the LCATs in “A02.12_PWS_IWR_HEC_MATOC_dated_20231206.docx”.

Question 3:

Document: B08.02_W912HQ24R0007_dated_2024.01.17.pdf Page: 27 Section: L 3.1.1 Factor 1– Response to Example Task Order Question: The instructions state “Offerors shall submit a technical proposal including a proposed level of effort per each labor category per each task, in response to the Example Task Order that includes the Offeror’s proposed level of effort using the provided format in Attachment 5”. Could the government provide Attachment 5?

Section J - List of Documents, Exhibits and Other Attachments (Page 19) of the solicitation lists only 4 attachments:

· Attachment 1 – Performance Work Statement for MATOC (IDIQ)

· Attachment 2 – Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan

· Attachment 3 – USACE Past Performance Questionnaire

· Attachment 4 – Example Task Order Performance Work Statement

Answer: Disregard Attachment 5. Please propose in a manner that includes level of effort per labor category per task/subtask in the Example Task Order PWS with subtotals per each task/subtask and a grand total.

Question 4:

Page: 28 Section: L 3.1.2 – Factor 2 – Organizational Management and Personnel Availability Question: The instructions state “Offerors shall submit a written narrative proposal which describes and demonstrates the Offeror’s technical understanding and approach to satisfy the support needs of the USACE Hydrologic Engineer Center as outlined in the MATOC PWS (Attachment 1).” Could the government confirm that the Technical Approach to the MATOC PWS should be included in the “Organizational Management and Personnel Availability” factor? Neither section M 2.2 Factor 2 nor section M 3.2.2 Evaluation Criteria for Factor 2 includes evaluation criteria related to the technical understanding and approach for the MATOC PWS.

Answer: The submission requirements in Section L, and evaluation criteria in Section M are revised.

Question 5:

Page: 37 Section: M 3.2.1 Evaluation Criteria for Factor 1 – Response to Example Task Order Question: The evaluation criteria states “…The offeror’s proposal shall demonstrate how the offeror would solve both existing and near term (5 years) future technical problems and issues for the Corps of Engineers related to the example task order and provide a brief discussion on future applications that could be used to accomplish the stated objectives of each example task order.” Could the government confirm the duration of “near term” of 5 years related to the future technical problems and issues for the sample task order? Five years would be outside of the PoP for the sample task order.

Answer: Confirmed that the request is to think beyond the limit of the PoP. While work itself will occur in outyears, there are significant opportunities to perform foundational planning and create foundational products within the period of the POP. This request is to leverage an Offeror’s expertise in support of long-range planning and identification of current activities that would create positive benefits that extend beyond the POP. For example, how does the Offeror see state-of-the-art software development, performance of studies, or training evolving over the next 5 years?

Question 6:

Document: A02.12_PWS_for_Example_Task_Order.docx Page: 7 Section: 4.4 Deliverables Question: The Deliverable section states” Since it is possible for modifications and software support activities to exceed resources, the contractor shall not exceed the following representative list of activities:

Can the government clarify what is considered a “issue classification” and provide an example? Can the government confirm that only four meetings will be held during the 365-day Period of Performance?

Answer: Section 4.1 of the Example Task Order defines “Issue Classification.” An example of each item, except for meetings was provided. When submitting their proposal, the Offeror should provide their proposed levels of effort per each labor category for each of the tasks.

Question 7:

Page: 30 Section: L 3.4 Volume IV - PRICE Question: Second paragraph states “A subtotal for each task for base and option periods of the Example Task Order must be included.” but the PWS for Example Task Order states “Period of Performance is 365 days from award of this task order.” Can the government confirm if the Price Proposal for the Example Task Order is a single base period or if there is a mix of base and option periods in the 365-day PoP stated in the PWS.

Answer: This is standard language that simply states to include price info for base and options as applicable. There are no option periods listed in the Example Task Order PWS. Task Orders against the MATOC may or may include options.

Question 8:

Page: 30 Section: L 4.0 Volume IV – ADMINISTRATIVE REQUIREMENTS Question: Section 3.4 VOLUME IV - PRICE and Section 4.0 VOLUME IV- ADMINSTRATIVE REQUIREMENTS are both titled “VOLUME IV”. Can the government update Section 4.0 to VOLUME V – ADMINISTRATIVE REQUIREMENTS.

Answer: The labelling and numbering identified above was amended in Section L.

Question 9:

Page: 27 Section: L 2.2 Format Question: The instructions state “Font Size – 12-point except for tables and illustrations”. Is there a font size limit for tables and illustrations?

Answer: Font no smaller than size 9 may be used for tables and illustrations.

Question 10:

Document: B08.02_W912HQ24R0007_dated_2024.01.17.pdf Page: 38 Section: M 3.3.4 Question: The evaluation criteria states “Offerors shall submit all Government and/or commercial contracts for the prime offeror and each major subcontractor in performance or awarded during the past three years, from the issue date of this RFP, which are relevant to the efforts required by this RFP.” Should this state “Offerors shall submit no more than five Government and/or commercial contracts …” rather than all contracts? For a large business there could be more than 5 contracts awarded within the last 3 years that are relevant to the efforts required by the RFP.

Answer: That is correct. No more than five should be submitted from within the past 3 years.

Question 11: Section 3.4 (Volume IV – Price) states that “Labor rates proposed for the labor rate schedule (Section B) shall be binding for the entire performance period of the IDIQ MATOC”. Are we correct in assuming it is acceptable to escalate rates on an annual basis?

Answer: USACE cannot tell businesses how to price. That is a business decision. The language from the RFP means that once negotiates rates are included in the contract award, they are binding, thus an offeror is free to choose whether to keep rates flat or escalate.

Question 12: How many awards does USACE anticipate giving?

Answer: The anticipated quantity of awards is unknown. The answer to this question depends on the quality of proposals received.

Question 13: Does USACE know how many awards will be given to small businesses versus large?

Answer: See Question 12.

Question 14: The solicitation states "Offerors shall propose the Key Personnel identified by the Government for this requirement and submit resumes demonstrating the appropriate education and experience."(B08.02+W912HQ24R0007+dated+2024.01.17.pdf - Page 28 of 41 – Factor 2) and refers to the MATOC PWS. However, the MATOC PWS does not identify which of the Appendix A Labor Categories represent Key Personnel.

What are the Labor Categories for which Key Personnel should be identified and resumes and letters of commitment submitted in the response?

Answer: Offerors may supply a summary table of their staff and provide resumes for a sampling of the people listed in the summary table which includes their key staff or examples of their key staff. Seeing that section 2.2 states “The offeror must demonstrate sufficient technical and administrative facilities and staff to accomplish and support contract requirements.”, the USACE expects Offerors to supply the key personnel that supports that statement and addresses question #1 above.

Question 15: Can the Army consider moving the letter of commitment requirements from the overall MATOC level to the TORFPs level? If we provide letters of commitment for the entire org chart at the MATOC level, then our minimum guaranteed amount needs to reflect the opportunity costs for the entire organization chart.

Answer: Letters of Commitment will not be moved to the task order level. USACE needs to evaluate whether Offerors selected for award have sufficient adequately qualified personnel to meet the needs of completing multiple task orders simultaneously. USACE does not expect Offerors to solely dedicate personnel only to this MATOC. Additionally, the minimum guarantee will not be raised.

Question 16: The solicitation states "The Offeror shall submit a minimum of three (3) and no more than five (5) examples of its most recent and relevant project efforts" and goes on to request similar past performance information for major subcontractors. (B08.02+W912HQ24R0007+dated+2024.01.17.pdf - Page 28 of 41 – Factor 3) Please confirm that three to five past performance examples are required for each major subcontractor as well as for the Offeror.

Answer: The RFP has been amended to reflect that offeror should submit a maximum of three past performance examples for major subcontractors.

Question 17: Are there minority/sbe requirements or goals? The solicitation states that the primary goal is 20% Total Small Business and will be considered in the evaluation factors, but also seems to include additional goals for dbes on Page 40 of 41. “Small Business Subcontracting Plan.”

Answer: The goals are bifurcated. There is a mandatory goal of 20% of the total contract value which shall be subcontracted to small businesses. The socioeconomic categories are additional goals that should be met if possible. Small business primes that perform at least 20% of the required services themselves clearly would mee this mandate, although FAR 52.219-14 would apply to small business prime contractors.

Question 18: The Example Task Order is for minor bug fixes and enhancements to an existing HEC software, HEC-SDS, and calls for a firm fixed price estimate based on a representative list of activities. There is a wide range of uncertainty in price estimation which could be resolved with additional information about HEC-SDS. Which of the following are available to reduce price estimate uncertainty:

Answer: HEC-SDS is a hypothetical software tool, based on similar tools developed at HEC. Because it does not exist, there is no codebase, Jira tickets or developer/user documentation available for review. One representative Jira ticket for each item in the PWS has been provided as an attachment to this response.

Additionally, HEC has a large number of public code repositories located at the below website: https://github.com/orgs/HydrologicEngineeringCenter/repositories?type=all

Since there are so many (97, to be exact), HEC recommends that Offerors consider looking at the following three, though of course Offerors may look at any:

These three represent the languages and variety of purposes that span the type of work where USACE HEC is looking for contractor support.

Question 19: Should the price proposal present one set of rates for the Team (i.e., all team members including subcontractors use the same rates as basis / backup for bid)? Or are subs considered ODCs by contracting, and therefore should present separate rates?

Answer: Subcontractors may be considered ODCs, however price analysis will be conducted on subcontractors to ensure rates proposed for their labor categories are fair and reasonable.

Question 20: Should the submittal be in 5 volumes or are the Price and Administrative volumes combined as volume IV? Page 26 of RFP states - Proposals shall be comprised of four volumes, and submitted in electronic form, as indicated below. Then shows 5 volumes.... but on page 30 states - 4.0 VOLUME IV - ADMINISTRATIVE REQUIREMENTS (same Volume Number as Price) but then states that Volume V has no page limits.

Answer: Price and Administrative are separate volumes. The RFP was revised to reflect this.

Question 21:

Submission Instructions, Page 27, Section 2.2 Format. “A Table of Contents should be created using the Table of Content feature in MS Word”. Please confirm if another program can be used besides MS Word, such as Adobe InDesign, if the table of contents also creates links for each section, allowing you to navigate to different parts of your document?

Answer: USACE is flexible on this as long as the table of contents is presentable.

Question 22:

Page 27, Section 3.1: 3.1 VOLUME I – TECHNICAL Volume I shall not exceed 100 pages. Does the 100-page limit for Volume I include resumes as required by 3.1.2 Factor 2 – Organizational Management and Personnel Availability?

Answer: Yes.

Question 23:

Page 31, Section 3.5.4. "Financial Statements: Provide the financial statement of the Offeror for the Offeror’s most recent fiscal year, certified by an independent accounting firm, if practicable, or by an authorized officer of the organization." Please provide specific detail on what information the Corps requires in the financial statement. Our assumption is the Corps requires a balance sheet, profit and loss statement, etc.

Answer: This is correct. We need to see that each firm has sufficient financial strength to be viable to complete multiple task orders simultaneously.

Question 24:

Page 37, Section 3.2.1. Evaluation Criteria for Factor 1 – Response to Example Task Order. "The offeror’s proposal shall demonstrate how the offeror would solve both existing and near term (5 years) future technical problems and issues for the Corps of Engineers related to the example task order and provide a brief discussion on future applications that could be used to accomplish the stated objectives of each example task order."

Q24.1: Please re-state this sentence using multiple sentences as necessary to clarify its meaning.

Answer: The RFP was revised to state “The offeror’s proposal shall demonstrate how the offeror would solve existing technical problems and issues for the Corps of Engineers related to the example task order. In addition, the offeror shall provide a brief description on how they might solve near term (5 years) future technical problems and issues that could address the objects of future task orders proposed within this MATOC.”

Q24.2: The term "future applications" could refer to HEC software applications, third party applications, or the usage of software applications to solve engineering problems.

Answer: “Future applications” could refer to how software development could be performed in the next 5 years or how studies may be performed, or training conducted in the next 5 years. These are the three main areas where USACE HEC is looking for assistance under this MATOC. What USACE HEC is interested in, is knowing if the Offeror has ideas how the profession may evolve over the next 5 years and how the USACE HEC could potentially take advantage of the efficiencies such as cloud computing, AI (artificial intelligence) or ML (machine learning).

Q24.3: Additionally, only one example task order was provided in conflict with the phrase "each example task order". Is this requesting a plan for future task orders?

Answer: The request of this MATOC is for assistance in software development, implementation of software through studies, and training and support. Only one Example Task Order was provided for evaluation purposes that focuses on software development but actual Task Orders to be issued in the future against the MATOC may request assistance in the areas of software implementation through studies and/or training and support. There is no request to submit a plan for future task orders, but rather whether different techniques for software development could be performed in the next 5 years, or how studies may be performed, or training conducted in the next 5 years.

Question 25:

Page 5, Section 3.1.2. 3.1.2 "Scrum Meetings. At various frequencies, as appropriate for the sprint, the contractor and HEC will meet to discuss progress of work. HEC will provide direction as needed. Each meeting is expected to last one hour and will be held by phone or webinar."

4.4 Deliverables

Since it is possible for modifications and software support activities to exceed resources, the contractor shall not exceed the following representative list of activities.

1) Twenty-Two (22) Issue classifications 2A) Seventeen (17) Minor Bug Fixes 2B) Five (5) Routine Bug Fixes

3) Eight (8) Minor Modification

4) Four (4) Meetings

Section 4.4's Deliverables, states "shall not exceed Four (4) meetings". Section 4 has no requirement for meetings other than the deliverable requiring four meetings. Please provide a meeting requirement stating the length of the meeting and the required number of attendees. Suggested is that the length requirement from Section 3.1.2 is used (1 hour) along with 3 attendees.

Answer: Each of the 4 meetings is expected to last 1 hour with 3 contracting staff members participating.

Question 26:

Page 28, Section 3.1.2. Offerors shall propose a minimum of 1 Key Person for each of the Key Personnel for this requirement with adequate education (including certifications) and experience as detailed in the MATOC PWS.

The MATOC PWS lists labor categories, but no specific mention of Key Personnel. Does there need to be a Key Personnel listed for each labor category, with a resume and letter of commitment?

Answer: See response to question #14.

Question 27:

Appendix A - Labor Categories

There are conflicting labor categories between the main solicitation PWS document and the example task order PWS. Should we provide rates for both sets of categories, or only the categories in the main PWS? Which set of categories should be used for the example task order estimate?

Answer: The LCATs in “A02.12_PWS_for_Example_Task_Order.docx” were updated to match the LCATs in “A02.12_PWS_IWR_HEC_MATOC_dated_20231206.docx”.

Question 28:

Appendix A - Labor Categories

Are these the only labor categories that may be used under this MATOC, or can others be proposed in response to this solicitation? We assume that it will be acceptable to propose additional categories as long as we defined appropriate minimum qualifications.

Answer: The government is open to the need for additional labor categories in the future and these could be provided later if necessary. However, the labor categories that have been defined are the labor categories we feel are necessary to meet the needs of the MATOC both now and the immediate future.