Inactive

THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS, AN INVITATION FOR BIDS, OR A REQUEST FOR QUOTATIONS. FURTHER, IT DOES NOT REPRESENT A COMMITMENT BY THE GOVERNMENT TO PAY FOR COSTS INCURRED IN PREPARATION AND SUB... THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS, AN INVITATION FOR BIDS, OR A REQUEST FOR QUOTATIONS. FURTHER, IT DOES NOT REPRESENT A COMMITMENT BY THE GOVERNMENT TO PAY FOR COSTS INCURRED IN PREPARATION AND SUBMISSION OF DATA OR ANY OTHER COSTS INCURRED IN RESPONSE TO THIS ANNOUNCEMENT. This is a Sources Sought Notice (NTSB-0002) with the intent to award a sole source time and materials Blanket Purchase agreement (BPA) to General Dynamics Information Technology, Inc. (GDIT), under the authority of FAR 8.405-6(a)(1)(i)(B), only one source is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services are unique or highly specialized. Notice is provided as information to the marketplace, market research, and is an invitation for any other qualified companies to express their interest in and demonstrate their capability to provide the required work. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent Federal agency with the primary missions of investigating civil aviation accidents in the United States and significant accidents in the other modes of transportation -- railroad, highway, marine and pipeline -- and issuing safety recommendations aimed at preventing future accidents. The NTSB’s Vehicle Recorder Division extracts, formats, and analyzes data from a wide variety of recording devices, both undamaged and damaged, including: aircraft flight data and cockpit voice recorders; recorders installed in locomotives, large ships, highway vehicles; as well as other electronic devices with non-volatile memory. The Division also examines recorded electronic audio and video information from aircraft, ship, train, support communication systems, and personal electronic devices. The Division has been using various custom developed software applications for its multimodal data recovery and analysis tasks. Those applications include Crash Investigation Data Extraction and Readout (CIDER) for Flight Data Recorders (FDRs) and other modal recorders and data; the Reveal application for binary chip-level data discovery, recovery and analysis; and other data read-out, discovery, recovery, and analysis toolkits; as well as other libraries and tools to support daily investigative work and help manage recorder workflow. The software needs of the Vehicle Recorder Division continue and change, as the recorder industry, electronic devices and related technologies evolve. The Division must constantly monitor and ensure it has software tools up to date for its investigative work. As with most software applications, these software tools require continuing software maintenance and enhancement efforts, to ensure their capabilities to always meet the Division’s needs. The NTSB has identified the following four (4) Task Areas for software development and support: Task Area 1 – System Maintenance Task Area 2 – New Features and Functionality Task Area 3 – System Enhancements Task Area 4 – Software Quality Assurance The total period of performance is approximately August 17, 2020 through August 16, 2025 including options (one 12-month base year and four 12-month option years). System development, enhancements, maintenance as well as new features and functionality were performed for CIDER and Reveal software tools through previous software contracts and BPAs with GDIT in the past sixteen years. CIDER alone includes twelve (12) main sections. They are: FDR Software Application, the Incident Database Module and the WebDAV File Management Module, the Data Mining Module, the accommodation of a new flight recorder format, ARINC-767, Tape Recovery Module, Animation Module, Image Processing Module, Chip Level Recovery Module, Railplus Module, Plotting Module Update using JFreechart, CSV (comma separated values) File Import Module, and Data Frame Definition (DFD) Module Upgrade. Reveal is another software tool that has unique binary and custom view capabilities as well as other advanced features for binary data recovery and analysis. Specific and intimate knowledge of these specialized laboratory software applications, written in Java programming language, is required to ensure the NTSB they are working at an acceptable efficiency and capacity. Furthermore, this extensive familiarity is required to maintain the software, repair programming ‘bugs’ as they are identified, and to make enhancements. Finally, the NTSB requires a Contractor with an extensive understanding of flight data recorders, chip-level data recovery, and the analysis the NTSB performs of various data, as well as a detailed understanding of the workflow of the recorder specialists. The NTSB requires a Contractor with extensive knowledge and understanding of flight recorder data generated from various flight data recorders, and the Division’s chip-level data recovery process, an ultimate understanding of the current lab software, and experience/knowledge in Java, Microsoft SQL, WebDav and JFreechart software products that these software are developed with. A total of approximately 70,000 hours of software system development, enhancements, maintenance as well as new features and functionality have been performed by GDIT to date. The NTSB requires support for systems that have been extensively customized over sixteen years. In addition to the cost consequences, there are potentially serious technical consequences to awarding to a Contractor that does not have intimate technical and functional knowledge of these specialized software applications. These proprietary tools are essential to the NTSB Vehicle Recorder Division’s daily operation, which includes recorder data and chip-level data recovery and analysis. It is an unacceptable risk to rely on a Contractor that lacks the knowledge or experience necessary to maintain such critical systems for the NTSB. The absence of obtaining support from a Contractor with the qualifications described above will compromise vital agency operations and have an inherently adverse impact on the NTSB’s ability to fulfill its mission. It will also severely limit, the ability of the NTSB to perform multimodal data recovery and analysis tasks, binary chip-level data discovery, recovery and analysis; and other data read-out, discovery, recovery, and analysis necessary to comply with its mandate. Sources capable of fully satisfying the above requirements are invited to submit capability statements/expressions of interest providing the Government the necessary information to determine actual capability. At a minimum, this information, which must be prepared specifically in response to this notice should, must include: (1) identification of company or organization; (2) an assertion of existing, full capability to meet proposed requirements; (3) business/contracts/marketing office point(s) of contact; (4) notification of business size and /or special status; and (5) any additional information that may be useful to the successful procurement of the requirements, if solicited. These expressions of interest shall adhere to a ten (10)-page submission limit plus web links and any specialized product descriptions. The statement of qualifications should include only information that clearly demonstrates the respondent's capabilities, expertise, and experience to provide the requirements described in this notice. General marketing material should not be included. The NTSB prefers that companies do not submit proprietary material. However, the Government recognizes that proprietary data may be a part of your submittal. If so, clearly mark such restricted or proprietary data and present it as an addendum to the non-restricted/non-proprietary information. 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 the proposed purchase order based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. All responsible sources may submit a capability statement, which shall be considered by NTSB. Parties must submit information within fourteen (14) days of publication of this notice. NTSB will not return capability statements and the supporting documentation submitted in response to this notice. Telephone responses and inquiries will not be accepted. You may email questions regarding this notice to the issuing office to Bryan J. Moy via email at: bryan.moy@ntsb.gov.