RECOVERY--Y--Multiple Award Task Order Contract (MATOC), Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ), Southwestern Division, Horizontal Construction.

RECOVERY--The current solicitation is still in DRAFT form. Do NOT prepare your proposal based on this draft. Until the final solicitation is posted in FBO/ASFI, we are NOT accepting proposals at this time. Comments from industry on the DRAFT solicitation are welcome, please submit questions utilizing via Bidder Inquiry in ProjNet at www.projnet.org/projnet until 30 Sep 09.

RECOVERY--This Solicitation is issued as DRAFT with a tentative response date of 1 Sep 09. Comments from industry are welcome, please submit questions utilizing via Bidder Inquiry in ProjNet at www.projnet.org/projnet . Submit comments no later than 14 Aug 09.

RECOVERY--This solicitation is tentatively scheduled to issue on or about 27 July 2009. Receipt of Phase I Proposals will be on or about 26 August 2009.

This Acquisition shall be competed as 8(a) Small Disadvantaged Business in the SBA Servicing Office area of REGION 6 (Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas) and REGION 7 (Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa) for Design-Build Horizontal Construction Services. This solicitation will be evaluated under the Design-Build two-phase process utilizing best value trade-off acquisition procedures.

The Galveston District intends to award two or more Firm Fixed Priced (FFP) Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) Multiple Award Task Order Contracts (MATOCs) to Small Businesses under the 8(a) pool, with an estimated workload value of approximately $225,000,000.00 for SWG and SWD customers as follows: Civil Works, Military, and International and Interagency Support (IIS) mission area. The contracts will contain a base period plus four one-year options for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Southwestern Division (SWD) for design-build, design-bid-build and construction services with an estimated maximum task order limitation of $15,000,000.00 and a minimum task order limitation of $3,000.00. The minimum guarantee for the unrestricted MATOCs is $3,000.00 and it only applies to the base period.

The Government reserves the right to exceed the stated maximum task order limitation. The solicitation will be a two-phase negotiated acquisition; there will not be a public bid opening. All contracts will be awarded based upon an evaluation of the overall Best Value to the Government.

The work will be limited to the geographic boundaries of the Southwestern Division, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Scope of Work: The MATO contracts are intended for multi-tasking of horizontal construction services for a wide variety of new construction, maintenance, repair, and alteration projects for Civil, Military, and International and Interagency Support (IIS) Projects. The work will include, but is not limited to anchored earth retention, breakwaters, jetties, spillways, bulkheads, embankments, dikes, flood control channels and structures, marine related structures such as gates and locks, dams, levees, as well as anti-terrorism and force protection, outdoor recreation facilities, park and recreational open space improvements.

This requirement is part of the total MATOC program requirements for Horizontal Construction in the Southwestern Division (SWD) of approximately $950 million all contracts combined to provide capacity to support the execution of SWD's horizontal construction, workload missions, including horizontal construction missions associated with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) signed into law on February 20, 2009. There must be more than two awards to create a Historically Under-Utilized Business Zone (HUBZone), Small Disadvantaged Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), 8(a) Small Disadvantaged (SDB) or unrestricted large business pool to establish a pool of two or more each, the remaining contract capacity of the pool not established will be distributed by 1) equally distributing the total contract capacity to the remaining pools unless no set-aside pools can be established due to lack of competition at which point the total capacity will be redistributed to the unrestricted pool, and/or 2) making additional competitive awards to the remaining set-aside pools unless not set-aside pools can be established due to lack of competition at which point additional unrestricted contracts will be award.

In determining which contractor pool to solicit for a given task order requirement the Contracting Officer, in consultation with the Product Delivery Team will consider 1) the complexity of the work, 2) contract task order limitation, 3) on-going work, 4) bonding capacity, and any other task order specific requirement.

Each task order will be awarded pursuant to FAR 16.505, and in accordance with the provisions contained within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The task order terms and conditions including the scope of work will be the same for the unrestricted, 8(a), HUBZone and SDVOSB contractors. However, the maximum contract capacity, task order limitations, contract minimum guarantee and bonding capacity will differ between the four contractor pools. All contracts will remain active unless or until: 1) unless the contractor has a documented past performance record of unsatisfactory; 2) until contract expiration; 3) until task order completion; 4) until the total contract capacity limit is reached, or 5) the contract is Terminated for Convenience of the Government.

It is anticipated that one or more of the task orders under this acquisition is subject to the World Trade Organization Government Procurement Agreement and Free Trade Agreements.

CONTRACT INFORMATION: This solicitation will be evaluated under the Two-Phase Design Build Process. The first phase consists of a process known in the commercial design-build industry as the Request for Qualifications or acronym: RFQ. (This solicitations refers to it as Phase1.) In Phase 1, interested firms or joint venture entities (referred to as Offeror's) may submit certain specified performance capability proposals, demonstrating their capability to successfully execute the design-build construction IDIQ MATO contract resulting from this solicitation. The Government will evaluate the performance capability proposal in accordance with the criteria described in the solicitation and will short-list no more than five of the Phase 1 Offerors to compete for the design-build MATO contracts in Phase 2 of the process.

In Phase 2 the selected Offeror's will submit the remainder of the technical/ performance capability proposals and a price proposal for a seed project. The Government will evaluate the Phase 2 proposals in accordance with the criteria described for Phase 2 in the solicitation and award the contracts to the responsible Offerors whose proposal conforms with all terms and conditions of the solicitation and whose proposal is determined to represent the overall best value to the Government considering technical design quality, performance capability and/or cost.

The North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) code applicable to this project is 237990 (Other Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction) which corresponds to Standard Industrial Code (SIC) 1629. The Small Business Size Standard is $33.5 million.

Estimated solicitation issue date is on or about 17 June 2009 under Solicitation Number W912HY-09-R-0025. Proposals for the Phase I are anticipated to be due on or about 17 July 2009. If the Government elects to conduct a Pre-Proposal Conference, details regarding the Conference will be provided in the solicitation. The solicitation will be a negotiated acquisition. There will be no public bid opening. This solicitation will be issued via Internet only. Notification of amendments shall be made via Internet only, as well. It is therefore the contractors responsibility to check the following address daily for any posted changes to this solicitation. After solicitation issuance, contractors may register to be placed on a plan holders list, view and/or download this solicitation and all amendments at the following internet addresses: https://acquisition.army.mil/asfi or https://www.fbo.gov Plans and specifications will not be available in paper format or on compact disc. Technical inquiries are to be submitted via Bidder Inquiry in ProjNet at www.projnet.org\projnet . All offerors are encouraged to visit the Armys Single Face to Industry Website at https://acquisition.army.mil/asfi to view other business opportunities. Offerors must be registered with the Central Contractor Registration (CCR), in order to receive a Government contract award. To register, the CCR Internet address is: http://www.ccr.gov . To register, the CCR Internet address is: http://www.ccr.gov.
The Contract Specialist for this solicitation will be Lucille Smith, (409)766-3845; or by e-mail at Lucille.r.smith@usace.army.mil.