J&A_Olmsted_Backup_Wicket_Lifter_(Redacted).pdf

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Justification and Approval for Other than Full and Open Competition

1. Contracting Activity: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-Louisville District, P.O. Box 59, Louisville, KY 40201-0059

2. Description of Action: This action is a sole source, firm-fixed-price contract to procure a brand-specific positioning winch system on the Olmsted Locks and Dam backup wicket lifter barge from Power Dynamics Innovations (PDI). (Unique Entity Identifier: 082487265, CAGE Code: 0T082). The positioning of the wicket lifter barge along the wicket dam pass requires two winches located aft on the barge to be moored to the left boat abutment on the Kentucky side of the river while a towboat is used to maneuver the barge from the starboard side. The positioning winches maintain alignment of the wicket crane and barge with the wickets and prevent the barge from going over the dam. Funding for this action is currently available at the District (Civil funded – 85% Civil General (CG) and 15% Inland Waterways Trust Fund (IWTF).

3. Description of Supplies/Services: The scope of work includes the procurement of PDI positioning winches on the backup wicket lifter for the Louisville District, Olmsted Lock and Dam MEGA project in Olmsted, IL. This wicket lifter will act as a backup to the primary wicket lifter procured under contracts for the wicket lifter crane, W912QR-16-C-0021 (Appleton Marine, Inc.), and for the wicket lifter barge, W912BU-16-C-0035 (Conrad Shipyard, LLC). It is estimated the acquisition cost of the positioning winches will be similar to the cost of the PDI winches for the primary wicket lifter barge, minus design costs; with markups, the estimated cost is . Approval is requested to award the contract for the positioning winches for the backup wicket lifter barge to PDI so that the winches on the primary and backup wicket lifter barges will be identical.

4. Authority Cited: 10 U.S.C. 2304(c)(1); FAR 6.302-1(a)(2) – Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.

5. Reason for Authority Cited:

a) Background:

i) Olmsted Locks and Dam Project

The Olmsted Locks and Dam (L&D) project was initiated in 1993 with the purpose of constructing two 1200 foot lock chambers, approach walls and a high lift dam to replace Locks and Dams 52 and 53. L&D 52 and 53 are approximately 90 years old and in failing or failed condition. The Olmsted locks were completed in 2002 and the current contract to construct the dam was awarded in 2004. The Olmsted L&D project site is located 17 miles upstream on the Ohio River from the confluence with the Mississippi River. This stretch of river is the busiest waterway in the nation and considered the hub of the Inland Water Transportation System. An average of 17 commercial tows (a typical tow configuration is 1,150 feet long by 105 feet wide) navigate this section of the river each day. The estimated net annual benefit of the project to the

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Nation’s commercial industry is approximately $640 million (or approximately $2 million per day).1

ii) Olmsted Dam & Need for a Backup Wicket Lifter

Olmsted Wicket Dam Portion consists of 140 steel moveable sections of dam which rest on the bottom of the river when the river elevation is high allowing navigation to pass by the site unhindered. The wickets are hinged to a foundation on the bottom of the river, allowing them to be raised or lowered when needed. When the river elevation is low, the wickets are raised from the bottom of the river using the wicket lifter, which hooks the wickets and then raises and latches them into an upright position where they stand together to form the dam. The connection between the wickets and the foundation requires that the wickets be raised in a particular geometry; i.e., the wickets must follow a particular path while being raised. The wicket lifter must be in the correct position so the wicket lifter crane can follow this geometry in raising the wickets.

The target time frame for raising the wicket portion of the dam is 12 to 24 hours. Once raised, the dam impounds a pool of water from the Olmsted L&D to the next locks upstream on the Ohio, Tennessee, and Cumberland Rivers. This pool not only enables navigation during low water conditions, but also ensures sufficient water levels for various municipality and industrial water intakes located upstream of the site. With only one wicket lifter onsite there is a single point of failure for operating the dam – if this wicket lifter becomes damaged or is out of service for maintenance, the Louisville District would not be able to raise or lower the dam, impairing the District’s ability to maintain navigation on this part of the Ohio River. The previous locks and dams that Olmsted replaces were a pair of wicket dams which each had their own wicket lifter to raise and lower the dam. Therefore, if the wicket lifter at one dam, e.g. L&D 52, was damaged or out of service due to maintenance, the wicket lifter from the neighboring dam, L&D 53, could be used to operate L&D 52 while L&D 52’s wicket lifter was being repaired. Olmsted, being a one-of-a-kind wicket dam, needs to have wicket lifter redundancy at Olmsted itself. This on-site redundancy is needed to ensure operability of the dam, because there will be no other sites where Olmsted could borrow a wicket lifter from if the current Olmsted wicket lifter is out of service.

The primary wicket lifter is currently the only means of raising the wickets at Olmsted L&D.

Loss of the primary wicket lifter would require that the Louisville District take extraordinary measures, like placing rock dikes, to impound a minimum pool for navigation and municipal drinking water intakes. Although Louisville District has used rock dikes at L&D 52, this solution may not be feasible at Olmsted Dam, due to the higher design head pressure (force of the water) and sill depths (drop off from the dam to the downstream riverbed). Therefore, if the Louisville District fails to acquire a backup wicket lifter, even more expensive and drastic measures may need to be taken if the wicket lifter were to break after L&D 52 and 53 are decommissioned. If such measures were found to be not feasible, or were attempted and were found to be unsuccessful, Olmsted L&D would not be able to hold the minimum pool elevation. The low water conditions would interrupt river traffic between the Olmsted L&D and Smithland L&D (approximately 45 river miles upstream), creating a significant adverse impact on commercial river traffic. Additionally, if pool elevation is not maintained in this section of the Ohio River, 1 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, PACR, 2012. The estimate is based on 2011 price levels and OMB directed 7 percent discount rate. More specifically, the estimate is an average annual value calculated by discounting and amortizing the benefits expected over the 50-year analysis period.

3 For Official Use Only intakes at the Shawnee Steam Plant, Crittenden-Livingston Water District, and Paducah Water Districts would be adversely impacted. A backup wicket lifter would mitigate this risk by providing redundancy that ensures operability of the dam even if the primary wicket lifter is out of commission due to damage or repairs.

iii) PDI Positioning Winches

The primary wicket lifter utilizes specially designed PDI positioning winches. The winches have specialized brake timing, braking system backups, and safety factors. Utilizing the same winches on the backup wicket lifter reduces spare parts inventory by not having to maintain two different systems, and avoids the need for additional design cost. The positioning winches include an interface specifically designed for use with the wicket lifter. Maintaining competencies for only one winch system will also reduce labor efforts and the risk of user error.

The wicket lifter crane for the primary wicket lifter was designed and procured under contract W912QR-16-C-0021, and the barge under contract W912BU-16-C-0035. The PDI positioning winches were included in the barge contract. The wicket lifter is highly specialized and part of that includes the positioning winches.

Several factors contributed to the design process to determine the winch requirements for the wicket lifter barge. The original design concept for the wicket lifter positioning system incorporated two conventional mooring winches without redundant braking systems. Recent failure of the positioning winch on the smaller wicket lifter servicing Lock and Dam 52 and 53 resulted in an additional requirement to incorporate redundant brakes to improve the safety while performing wicket lifting operations. In addition, to further improve safety, the design of the wicket lifter incorporated dual redundant winches in the event of failure of one positioning wire.

Therefore, USACE also required simultaneous control of the two winches.

The redundant braking and dual control systems are unique to the wicket lifter winches, and require sophisticated control systems that incorporate the capability to synchronize line speed and also to equalize rope tension. These features were custom designed for the electric motor power systems on the positioning winches and are not available on conventional mooring winches.

As a result of these technical requirements, off-the-shelf winches could not meet the technical requirements necessary to safely and efficiently lift wickets. Therefore, USACE procured a custom winch package specifically designed for the barge to meet the critical safety requirements that had been identified resulting from the accident on the other wicket lifter.

The winches were designed and engineered by PDI to have the following special features:

1) Designed to American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) and The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Standard B30.7 – Winches

2) Dual Redundant (Drum & Motor) Brakes: The winches are outfitted with redundant braking systems such that the failure of one system will not impact the remaining braking systems.

3) Drum & Motor Brake Ramp: The drum and motor brakes (two independent separate brakes) are hydraulically actuated and designed such that during loss of power or emergency stop the brakes are actuated over a two second ramp time. The delay was incorporated to prevent both brakes from actuating immediately and overloading the winch wire rope which may damage or snap the wire rope holding the barge from going over the dam. PDI has engineered and designed the hydraulic system to maintain the two second ramp time over the wide range of temperatures and operating conditions found at Olmsted lock and dam.

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4) Synchronized Dynamic Braking: The winches are operated by electric motors fed through a specialized VFD and control system. The system was designed to be able to operate over the full line speed range with full torque capacities for an indefinite amount of time. This allows the operators to position the barge accurately and consistently during lifting of all of the wickets.

5) Synchronized Constant Tension: The winches are fitted with a control system that monitors the load on the winches and maintains the tension on winches to keep the barge aligned with the wickets.

6) Synchronized Haul-in & Payout Functions: There are two positioning winches used to attach the barge to the left boat abutment. These winches can be operated in a synchronized mode from a single controller to allow the operator to more accurately position the barge along the wickets.

7) Increments of Ten (10) Feet: The control system was programmed to allow the barge to traverse one exact wicket to avoid inefficiencies during positioning between wickets.

Although these features could theoretically be recreated by a small number of other marine winch manufacturers (the government has identified four, according to its market research described below), only PDI can ensure that the winch systems are identical and truly redundant. As a result, only the same PDI winch system meets the Government’s requirements for safety and schedule.

Sole source acquisition from PDI will also decrease the Government’s costs.

b) Justification:

Sole sourcing the wicket lifter barge positioning winches for the backup wicket lifter barge to PDI meets the requirements of FAR 6.302-1(a)(2), which provides that:

When the supplies or services required by the agency are available from only one responsible source, or, for DoD, NASA, and the Coast Guard, from only one or a limited number of responsible sources, and no other type of supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements, full and open competition need not be provided for.

Winch systems such as those on the wicket lifter barge are only available from a limited number of responsible sources. In addition, the Government requires for safety, schedule, and cost reasons that the winch system for the backup wicket lifter be identical to the primary winch system, and therefore may only be procured from a single responsible source, PDI.

i) Safety

The wicket lifter barge is the only means of raising the dam at Olmsted Dam. Loss of the use of the primary wicket lifter would result in having to resort to extraordinary workarounds to attempt to raise the dam and maintain a navigable pool. A backup wicket lifter decreases the risk to the personnel, site, and equipment. In addition, having a backup wicket lifter components that are identical in maintenance and operation of the primary wicket lifter greatly reduces the chances for operational error. The backup wicket lifter positioning winches procured under the contemplated action will be identical to the primary wicket lifter winches procured under the prior contract.

It is not acceptable to unduly risk the safety of Olmsted Locks and Dam personnel and equipment. As has been experienced in the operation of Locks and Dam 52, emergency operations with substitute equipment create a high risk. At Olmsted, the wicket lifter crane

5 For Official Use Only operator must reach with a hook approximately 50 feet out and 20 feet down through flowing water to retrieve the top of the wicket. The operator is blind, but for a GPS system and an underwater acoustic camera to assist in guiding the hook to the attachment point on the wicket.

These systems and the general control layout of the crane are sophisticated, so the operator must become familiar with the control feel and layout. Operational familiarity with these two systems is of paramount importance to the successful and expedient operation of the dam. Different winching systems would unduly increase the risk that someone could be hurt, or something could be damaged, during these delicate operations.

Even if operators train to use non-identical backup equipment, they will nevertheless use it infrequently and under time constraints that prevent operator familiarity. If the primary wicket lifter is damaged during the middle of the dam raising, the operator must retrieve the backup, tie it to its anchorage, and winch it into position on the dam. Thus, even if trained to use back-up equipment, the operator will not have time to re-familiarize when the back-up is needed.

Operator error with the winching system can result in damage to the dam, including lost wickets.

A lost wicket can render the dam unable to raise until wickets are repaired or a damming vessel is placed on anchors and winched in front of the dam. This operation would add 1-4 days to the raising of the dam.

Using substitute equipment not only increases the risk of loss of the wickets and the substitute wicket lifter itself, but most importantly, unfamiliarity risks employee injuries. An identical backup wicket lifter decreases the risk to the personnel, site, and equipment. In addition, a backup wicket lifter winch system that is identical to the primary wicket lifter will significantly reduce the risk of operator error in raising the dam.

ii) Schedule

By obtaining the positioning winches from the same company that provided the original winches, the delivery schedule for the new wicket lifter will be reduced significantly because the engineering and design effort will be eliminated. The current wicket lifter has been through all design reviews, load testing, and the beginning of operational testing. These steps show that the current wicket lifter is going to be acceptable for the intended use. Procuring a new design from another vendor introduces the potential for unsuccessful execution in design, testing, and validation phase. Using PDI will greatly reduce the engineering and design time duplication, which in return reduces the exposure to the risks associated with having a single point of failure at the site by the same amount of time. Having a source of redundancy available to the project as soon as feasible reduces the risk of the project not being operated while the existing wicket lifter is repaired in the future.

iii) Cost

The Louisville District estimates that sole sourcing this work to PDI will save the Government from paying in duplicate engineering costs. These cost savings result from not having to design and engineer new positioning winches. There will be additional savings due to reduced inventory costs to support the two cranes, because buying non-identical winches would require another set of spare components, since many of the spare parts will be custom manufactured. Not purchasing spare parts for a second, different positioning winch system is expected to save the Government from paying .

In total, the Louisville District estimates that sole sourcing the positioning winches for the backup wicket lifter barge to PDI would avoid costs to the Government of

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iv) Alternative

Alternatives that were considered by the government in the original procurement were by competitive bid from the prime contractor to various winch contractors. The contract for the positioning winches was awarded to Power Dynamics Innovations. PDI is a small business.

Alternatives that were considered for this procurement were competitive bid or a potential sole source to the manufacturer of the original positioning winches. Competitive bid would have resulted in positioning winches that could have performed the work provided by another vendor;

however, the complexity and specialization of the primary wicket lifter positioning winches, delays to the schedule, and additional design and inventory costs showed this not to be a responsible alternative. Criticality of the positioning winches, the importance of operator familiarity, as well as the interchangeability of parts between the two wicket lifters drove the decision to request sole source approval to the original vendor for the positioning winches.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Based upon the information presented in Paragraph 5, competition for this action was not feasible. In order to gauge interest from industry and to obtain competition for this action, a Special Notice was posted to FBO.gov on 6 June 2018. As noted previously, competition was achieved on the previous contract for the barge, with PDI selected as providing the best value.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: Due to the reasons discussed above, the original source of the primary wicket lifter positioning winches, PDI, is the only responsible source. Procuring these winches from another vendor would result in substantial additional cost to the Government that would not be recovered through competition, and would unduly risk the health and safety of employees, damage to the dam, and the Government’s schedule. While this is considered a one-time requirement, should a similar requirement arise in the future, every effort will be made to compete it to the maximum extent possible.

8. Market Research: The barge was procured under contract W912BU-16-C-0035 (Conrad Shipyard, LLC). The PDI positioning winches were part of this contract. Conrad Shipyard solicited bids for the positioning winches, but when bids were received there were three small business vendors considered, Appleton Marine, Power Dynamics Innovations (PDI), and Superior Lidgerwood Mundy (SLM). At the time Appleton could not support the schedule and SLM was very expensive compared to Appleton and

PDI.

When a Sources Sought was sent out for replacement of the positioning winch for the wicket lifter at Lock and Dam 52, only one response was received by SLM. Due to the small number of responses to these contracts, it has been determined that there are few vendors in this specialized field. As stated previously, a Special Notice was posted to FBO.gov on 6 June 2018 for this new requirement on the backup wicket lifter. Only two (2) contractors responded. Based on the perceived lack of interest to the Special Notice as well as contact with knowledgeable experts from industry as well as the USACE Marine Design Center of Expertise in Philadelphia, PA, it appears that market conditions have remained stagnant since the previous procurement in FY2016.

9. Interested Sources: Louisville District posted a Special Notice on FBO on 6 June 2018, providing notification of the Government’s intent to sole source the procurement of the backup wicket lifter positioning winches. Responses were received from Schoellhorn-Albrecht Machine Co. Inc., and Superior Lidgerwood Mundy (SLM). Upon review of the responses, it is acknowledged that both companies have built positioning winches in the size range required for this contract. However, due to unacceptable

7 For Official Use Only increases in risk to safety, risk to the dam, and to the schedule, PDI is the only responsible source for the positioning winches and no other source will satisfy the agency’s requirements.

10. Other Factors:

a. Procurement history. Contract W912BU-16-C-0035 to Conrad Shipyard, LLC, as awarded on 29 July 2016 for the wicket lifter barge, including the positioning winches. This contract’s total award value was of which was for the positioning winches. Conrad Shipyard solicited bids for the positioning winches, but when bids were received there were three small business vendors considered, Appleton Marine, Power Dynamics Innovations (PDI), and Superior Lidgerwood Mundy (SLM). At the time Appleton could not support the schedule and SLM was very expensive compared to Appleton and PDI. When a Sources Sought was sent out for replacement of the positioning winch for the wicket lifter at Lock and Dam 52, only one response was received by SLM. Due to the small number of responses to these contracts, it has been determined that there are few vendors in this specialized field.

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11. Technical Certification: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance, which are included in the justification are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

12. Requirements Certification: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance, which are included in the justification are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

13. Fair and Reasonable Cost Determination, Certification and Approval

a. Fair and Reasonable Cost Determination: I hereby determine that the anticipated cost to the Government for this contract action will be fair and reasonable. This determination is based on the historical pricing provided under the previous procurement W912BU-16-C-0035 which was awarded on 29 July 2016 to Conrad Shipyard, LLC, a small business, on an Invitation for Bid (IFB) basis.

Also, certified cost or pricing data will be required from PDI0 prior to contract award due to the fact that none of the exceptions listed in FAR 15.403(b) apply.

b. Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. This certification serves as approval pursuant to FAR 6.304(a)(1).

14. Legal Review: I have reviewed the foregoing document and find it to be legally sufficient.