Notice of Intent to Sole Source, Incorporation of Mechanistic Models into PCASE

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Research and Development Center (ERDC), Geotechnical and Structures Laboratory (GSL) intends to issue a Firm Fixed Price (FFP) single source award to Intelligent Information Technologies, Corp. (IIT), 8901 Otis AVE STE 33, Indianapolis, Indiana for the Incorporation of Mechanistic Models into PCASE.

The Geotechnical and Structures Laboratory (GSL) of the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) is the Tri-Service lead for Airfields and Pavement research. As the Tri-Service lead, ERDC has the continuous mission to develop improved methods and materials for the design, construction, evaluation, maintenance, and repair of airfield and roadway pavements for the military. The ERDC developed a comprehensive pavement design and software tool in the 1990’s labelled Pavement-Transportation Computer Assisted Structural Engineering (PCASE) to provide a means of transitioning pavement design and evaluation methods to designers and evaluators. The PCASE software has been continuously edited and improved since the 1990’s to incorporate better pavement design procedures, performance models, and evaluation techniques. The continuous software development has been accomplished through collaborative efforts between ERDC research engineers and contracted commercial software developers with IIT Corporation. Recent ERDC development activities have resulted in the production of new mechanistic-empirical pavement design and evaluation models that will enhance the military’s ability to design and evaluate military pavements for its unique set of operational circumstances. These new pavement design and evaluation methods need to be incorporated into the PCASE Desktop Software system to provide a means of transitioning the technology to the user community. To accomplish this, GSL has the need to acquire support capabilities to develop software modules with the new pavement design models and new pavement evaluation techniques to aid in transitioning the technology to the military pavement community of practice. GSL will provide functional finite element models for the analysis of flexible and rigid pavement response to vehicle loads as well as detailed pavement performance models that relate the response model outputs to pavement distresses such as rutting and fatigue cracking.  The contractor shall incorporate the response models and performance models into discrete software modules within the PCASE Desktop Software system. The development of the prototype software requires an intimate knowledge and understanding of the existing PCASE Desktop Software system. In order to develop the prototype software modules and successfully modify the PCASE Desktop Software system, the contractor must be intimately familiar with PCASE’s syntax, variable naming conventions, digital linked libraries, software architecture scheme, and commenting methods. Successful development and modification of the existing PCASE Desktop Software system will require the contractor to integrate the new code with existing code, seamlessly accessing key portions of the existing code to support the new models. While alternative software development companies exist, they have no experience with the PCASE Desktop, and no experience with PCASE’s syntax, variable naming conventions, digital linked libraries, software architecture scheme, or commenting methods. IIT’s experience and expertise was acquired over decades of development, and a new software developer would require similar time and expense to be successful. Thus, there are no close alternative sources to meeting this requirement.

The award will be issued in accordance with FAR 13.500. The applicable North American Industrial Classification System Code (NAICS) code is 541511 (Custom Computer Programming Services) with a size standard of $34 million annual receipts. This notice of intent is for information purposes only.  

This notice is not a request for competitive quotes or proposals.  A solicitation will not be issued.  However, all responsible sources may submit a capability statement, proposal, or quotation, which shall be considered by the agency.  The information submitted must be provided in sufficient detail to demonstrate the vendor’s ability to fulfill this requirement.  The contractor must also provide a description of their past experience in fulfilling requirements which are the same or similar to this requirement and references for each. 

Information received will be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement.  A determination by the Government not to compete this requirement on a full and open competition basis, based upon responses to this notice, is solely within the discretion of the government. Oral communications are not acceptable in response to this notice.  Responses to this requirement may be submitted to Allison Hudson at Allison.B.Hudson@usace.army.mil AND Janalyn Dement at Janalyn.H.Dement@usace.army.mil.  The notice of intent number shall be included in the subject line of the e-mail submission.  Responses must be received no later than 1:00PM CST 15 May 2024.