Upgrade Honeywell electronic components Award Notice

Notice of Sole Source Award

Contract Number: 1305M221PNFFM0087

Award Description:  Upgrade Honeywell electronic components

NAICS:  811219 Other Electronic and Precision Equipment Repair

Solicitation: N/A

Sole Source Authority: FAR 6.302-2, Unusual and Compelling Urgency

Award Date:  April 5, 2021

Award Amount: $27,846.00

Period of Performance:  Completion date NLT 6/11/2021

Synopsis:

The NOAA/Eastern Acquisition Division (EAD) awarded a sole-source contract for $27,846.00 to Honeywell International, Inc. for the upgrade of Honeywell electronic components in the laboratory.  The Honeywell system has been unable to control the heated water temperatures as required. Staff personnel were monitoring and manually controlling water temperatures. It is vital to maintain water temperatures in the large seawater tanks. The seawater tanks are home to a large number of fish that are part of a three-year research project. The fish must remain alive and healthy throughout this research. The research was funded for more than $1,000,000.00. The requirement was deemed urgent due to unusual and compelling circumstances.in accordance with FAR 6.302-2, when the agency’s need for the supplies or services is of such an unusual and compelling urgency that the Government would be seriously injured unless the agency is permitted to limit the number of sources from which it solicits bids or proposals, full and open competition need not be provided for this action.  This notice is not a solicitation for competitive quotes, nor will a solicitation be issued in regards to this announcement.

Points of Contact for information regarding this notice are:

Kelly Parr, Contract Specialist, Kelly.Parr@noaa.gov

Dawn Dabney, Contracting Officer, Dawn.Dabney@noaa.gov

Sole Source Justification:

This requirement is for the upgrade of the Honeywell Electronic Components for the seawater laboratory, James J. Howard Marine Sciences, located in Highlands, NJ.

• Urgency – The nature of the requirement has been deemed urgent due to unusual and compelling circumstances.  Following competitive procedures would result in unacceptable delays resulting in serious injury to the Government.

Contract award to repair the Honeywell system at the Howard Lab is an urgent requirement.  Live adult fish were collected in the summer of 2018 for a research experiment to run from 2019-2020 that have been fed and monitored continuously.  This phase is part of a larger 3 year project funded in late 2017 for $1,007,295 with in kind resources (staff and facility) of $235,631 per year (The project involves an interagency agreement with BOEM (Bureau of Energy Management) that was to have completed in 2020.

The 2019 experiments were completed despite the broken Honeywell system by strategically timing the experiment and a lot of extra labor by maintenance and on site scientific staff at the Howard Lab to monitor and maintain temperature controls for the fish. The Honeywell problems cause the heated water temperatures to fluctuation wildly making temperature control impossible.

The last experiment should have run in 2020 but was cancelled due to COVID-19.  A staff person was designated as “essential” just to continue fish monitoring and feeding the population of fish, which were moved into a larger volume seawater tank on September 18, 2020 to mitigate the fluctuations in temperature caused by the Honeywell system.  Phase 0 pandemic conditions have made it impossible to provide the staff oversight needed to alleviate the lack of control by the Honeywell system.    

A project extension was granted until June of 2021.  Scientifically, the scientists must use the same fish collected in 2018 but only IF the fish are in good health. From December to March, the Honeywell system has continued to fluctuate wildly if not more and maintenance staff have been manually adjusting water flows to prevent catastrophically low temperatures from killing the fish. At this point, 1/3 of the population has been lost.   If this continues, the research cannot be completed.  The last year of the project is valued at approximately $330,000 in fish, food and person time.  The Honeywell system must be repaired to continue this research.

Awarded contract 1305M221PNFFM0087 to HONEYWELL INTERNATIONAL INC. for 27846.00 on 2021-04-05.