RFI - Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Watch Center (NWC) - National-Level Watch Center AV Support

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) National Watch Center (NWC) oversees a contract that provides service and technical support, maintenance, and more to the audio-visual systems within the agency’s watch centers, liaison offices within five partner agency locations, and response coordination centers (18 sites).  The agency is interested in developing an improved contract that provides comparable services while also allowing for additional funding to go onto the contract to purchase audio-visual (AV) components when existing equipment is no longer able to be serviced or repaired and when these types of outages result in reduced operational capabilities.

The purpose of this Request for Information (RFI)/Sources Sought, is to inform both industry and the government on the development of an improved audio visual (AV) support contract that better meets FEMA needs to support the agency’s watch centers.

FEMA’s existing contract for this effort supports 28 locations, which are in 18 geographically separated locations around the U.S.  A new contract may or may not support the agency’s 10 Regional Response Coordination Centers (RRCCs) and 1 National Response Coordination Center (NRCC), though remaining sites would still be spread over the same geographic area, with or without the RRCCs and NRCC.

GENERAL INFORMATION:  This RFI/Sources Sought, is issued solely for information gathering purposes to identify sources that can provide support for the Office of Business, Industry, and Infrastructure Integration (OB3I). In accordance with FAR 15.201(e), RFIs may be used when the Government wants to obtain price, delivery, other market information, and capabilities for planning purposes. Responses to these RFIs are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. This RFI shall not be construed as a commitment by the Government for any purpose, nor does it restrict the Government to an ultimate acquisition approach. Respondents are solely responsible for all expenses associated with their RFI response. Respondents will not receive additional information in response to their submittal to the RFI and will not be notified of the resulting market research.

PROPRIETARY INFORMATION AND DISCLAIMERS:  Respondents shall identify any proprietary information in its RFI response. Information submitted in response to this RFI will be used at the discretion of the Government. Further, the information submitted will remain confidential insofar as permitted by law, including the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts. FEMA reserves the right to utilize any non-proprietary technical information in the anticipated PWS or solicitation.

Although it is not necessary to address in their response, respondents shall be aware of any potential, actual, or perceived organizational conflicts of interests. Any real or potential conflicts must be sufficiently mitigated prior to a contract award. For further guidance, refer to the Federal Acquisition Regulation, Part 9.5.

Please review attachments: Draft PWS and RFI submittal Instructions.

(RFI) QUESTIONS:Please answers to the following in your response:

1. Company name and Unique Entity Identifier, as registered in www.sam.gov
2. Provide a point-of-contact name, phone, address, and email:
3. Provide your business size for the NAICS codes of 541612 and 541619:
4. What strategic sourcing vehicles (SSVs), government-wide acquisition contracts (GWACs), indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQs) contracts, or other contract vehicles are you a part of that are relevant to our requirement?
5. Can your company provide this solution on your own or would you partner/subcontract with another company? Do you have an existing relationship in place, or would you need to establish this with a potential partner/subcontract?
6. Have you provided similar services of similar scope and across a similarly wide-ranging geographic area?  Please reference above for geographic details.
7. This contract will require the vendor to have a Call Center for a single point of initial contact for supported sites to request technical support by phone, email, or both and for dispatch of a designated and qualified technician (requirements shown above).  Staffing the call center 24/7 is not a requirement but an initial phone response and emergency 8-hour response (for the loss of mission essential/critical capabilities) should be included.  Provide a brief description of your organizations experience staffing and maintaining a call center.
8. Included above is the previous evaluation strategy, our team is planning on revisiting the strategy and changes may occur prior to release of a final solicitation. How does your company want to be evaluated for this requirement? Do you have any recommendations for evaluation criteria we should consider including for the new solicitation or removing from the previous process?
9. One of two key aspects of a new contract is to allow for FEMA to fund the contract to have the contractor directly install a replacement equipment item or component if that is the only solution to restore capabilities (non-working part is deemed to be unserviceable).  This scope was not previously included.  Please see the 'scope' and 'history' sections above for details.  Provide a brief description of your organizations experience with installing and integrating AV components within existing systems.  
10. Please include any comments, questions, or suggestions related to the above draft requirements.
11. Do you have any concerns about this requirement, which if not addressed, may adversely impact your decision to bid on this requirement?