SOURCES SOUGHT
Y -- SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE FOR SOLE SOURCE MARKET RESEARCH FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF NCO ACADEMY COMPLEX FORT DRUM NEW YORK
- Notice Date
- 10/13/2016
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 236220
— Commercial and Institutional Building Construction
- Contracting Office
- Department of the Army, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, USACE District, New York, Attn: CENAN-CT, 26 Federal Plaza, New York, New York, 10278-0090, United States
- ZIP Code
- 10278-0090
- Solicitation Number
- W912DS-17-S-0001
- Archive Date
- 11/5/2016
- Point of Contact
- Loretta E Parris, Phone: 917-790-8182
- E-Mail Address
-
loretta.e.parris@usace.army.mil
(loretta.e.parris@usace.army.mil)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- Total Small Business
- Description
- SUBJECT: W912DS-17-S-0001 Sources Sought Notice for Sole Source Market Research for the Construction of NCO Academy Complex, Fort Drum, New York Description: THIS IS A NOTICE FOR SOURCES SOUGHT ONLY. THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL OR INVITATION FOR BID. THERE IS NO BID PACKAGE, SOLICITATION, SPECIFICATIONS OR DRAWINGS AVAILABLE WITH THIS ANNOUNCEMENT. IT DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A PROCUREMENT COMMITMENT BY THE U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS, IMPLIED OR OTHERWISE. NO CONTRACT WILL BE AWARDED FROM THIS SYNOPSIS. RESPONSE IS STRICTLY VOLUNTARY; NO REIMBURSEMENT WILL BE MADE FOR ANY COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH PROVIDING INFORMATION IN RESPONSE TO THIS SYNOPSIS OR ANY FOLLOW-UP INFORMATION REQUESTS. THE GOVERNMENT SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR OR SUFFER ANY CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES FOR ANY IMPROPERLY IDENTIFIED INFORMATION. The purpose of this synopsis is that the New York District plans to solicit and award a Best Value Trade Off Request for Proposal for a Construction Project for the NCO Academy Complex, Fort Drum, New York in FY17. 1. This notification serves three (3) purposes: A. To notify potential bidders of the Governments intent to solicit a brand name(s) only component for this project. B. To identify potential sources that can provide an equivalent to the brand name only item. C. Notification of the Army's intent to solicit brand name components as described below. 2. The items described below, under summary of requirements, are embedded in the construction project. The project will be issued competitively. Only the components described below will be sole source, if no other sources are identified that can provide an equivalent system. In the event no equivalent sources are found the brand name only justification will be issued pursuant to FAR Part 6.302-1, Only One Responsible Source. A subsequent market survey will not be published in support of a Justification and Approval for sole sourcing. Supplies of the brand name component will be provided directly to the Contractor(s) and not to the Government. 3. Summary of Requirements: A. Fire Alarm System manufactured by Honeywell Fire-Lite and Fire Alarm Transmitter by Monaco as follows: • Fire Alarm Control Panel (FACP): This project will involve the installation of one new Fire Alarm Control Panel. This piece of equipment is required to control the sequence of operations of the fire alarm devices and provide a display of the inputs and outputs. • Fire Alarm Devices: Fire alarm devices such as visual notification appliances (strobes), audible notification appliances (speakers), initiating devices (e.g. manual pull stations, smoke detectors, duct smoke detectors, and monitor modules), and control devices (e.g. control modules) will be required for this project. These devices must all be compatible with the fire alarm control panel (FACP) provided by the same manufacturer in order to send and receive addressable signals to/from the FACP. • Fire Alarm Transmitter: This project will involve the installation of one new Monaco fire alarm radio transmitter. These transmitters are required to be compatible with the existing Fort Drum alarm receiving station, which is a Monaco system. Using another product would result in the inability to transmit fire alarm signals to emergency services. In order to perform this scope of work, materials and services must be purchased from the manufacturer. This project will involve the installation of a new fire alarm system. Fire alarm system up-time and reliability are critically important factors in ensuring a safe environment for building occupants. Effective fire alarm systems will detect fires quickly and alert occupants effectively so they have adequate time to exit the building safely. The high casualty counts of many terrible fires in history could have been reduced or eliminated by using reliable and effective modern fire detection and alarm systems. In order to maximize reliability, a property manager such as Fort Drum DPW must perform frequent inspections, routine maintenance, and expedient repairs when defects or failures are identified. To this end, Fort Drum DPW has a dedicated service contract to maintain and repair fire alarm systems on post. Modern fire alarm systems - called ‘analog addressable' systems - utilize microprocessor-based control panels and devices. The extent to which these panels and systems should be considered ‘proprietary' varies across manufacturers. All of them utilize a number of features that are proprietary, such as: hardware, firmware (operating systems), software, programming tools and utilities, and built-in security features designed to restrict access to only technicians deemed qualified by that panel's manufacturer. Additionally, fire alarm devices that connect to the control panel have to be able to communicate with the panel. This communication between devices and panels is accomplished through a proprietary multiplex signal format in such a way that a fire alarm device will not function properly unless they are connected to the manufacturer make/model panels for which they were intended. Parts, therefore, are often not interchangeable between system makes and models. In order to accomplish a basic repair task, such as replacement of a defective fire alarm device, a technician must order a replacement part from the manufacturer, access the control panel's software system to remove the old device software address, add the new device software address in its place, apply the appropriate sequence of operations, and program the correct signal to report to the Fire Department's alarm receiving station. The extent to which that system is ‘proprietary' determines the difficulty of each of these steps. If a system is ‘highly proprietary' the task will be impossible without hiring the manufacturer themselves. Due to differences in business strategies, some fire alarm system manufacturers are ‘more proprietary' than others. Some of the ‘most proprietary' manufacturers, such as Simplex and Siemens, only permit in-company technicians to perform basic repair tasks on their systems. These companies will not grant outside technicians security access to their panels for software changes, and they will not hand over the required software tools and utilities. These prohibitions are promulgated by a business strategy that is geared towards guaranteeing a high standard of quality by using only factory-employed technicians. If such a system requires repair on Fort Drum, the Drum technicians will not be able to repair the system themselves. Instead, they will have to contact the manufacturer for the repair. If the cost of this repair exceeds the Drum DPW credit card limit, then a new contract will have to be awarded to perform the system repair, which can be a slow process. Recently, the lengthy process has resulted in a non-functional fire alarm system in an occupied building for multiple months. When a fire alarm system is down for an extended time it imposes an extraordinary burden on the Drum DPW, Fire Department, and Building Tenant, who will have to decide whether or not to relocate the occupants or impose a heightened fire safety strategy during occupied hours (such as a mandatory fire watch). Other fire alarm system manufacturers can be considered ‘less proprietary' because they employ a business strategy that allows customers much more flexibility of choice. Honeywell, for instance, manufactures a fire alarm system that almost every fire alarm company can install, maintain, and repair. Honeywell offers a two-day factory training to any fire alarm technician that wishes to attend. At the conclusion of this training the technician is granted a certificate and the ability to work on Honeywell systems. Control panels manufactured by Honeywell utilize security features that permit any factory-trained fire alarm service providers to access the control panel software tools, enabling them to perform all of the maintenance and repair functions without having to directly enlist the services of the manufacturer. Installation, maintenance, and repair services for these four systems can therefore be openly competed among a large number of qualified Contractors. Fort Drum has requested that USACE specify fire alarm systems manufactured by Honeywell and transmitters manufactured by Monaco for all current and future projects. The Fort Drum DPW contract technicians can maintain, repair, and expand these systems as needed. In the event that the contracted service provider changes, any future service provider will also be able to provide these services for these makes and models. If repairs can be made using the DPW invoicing system and not by individual contract actions or credit card purchases, then system repairs can be done expeditiously and the duration of system outages can be reduced significantly. B. The integration services from Trane, Inc., Piscataway, NJ to integrate the project's BAS into Fort Drum's existing EMCS. The Non-Commissioned Office Academy will have a Building Automation System (BAS) which will need to be integrated into the Fort Drum EMCS. The BAS is a system that is able to monitor and control equipment on a building level. An EMCS is a system that is able to monitor and control equipment in a given building from a remote location. This is an important tool that can be used to improve a building's energy efficiency and to assist the DPW in their operational and maintenance tasks. By providing a single point of access to the equipment in the building, the EMCS affords the DPW's already strained workforce the ability to trouble-shoot and, in many cases, solve mechanical problems that occur. An effective EMCS is a key component in today's property management atmosphere, in which energy efficiency improvements are constantly a priority and operational and maintenance staffing is barely adequate. This EMCS is a fiber-based user interface that integrates multiple BACnet/IP based systems together, collects, stores, and displays historical data, and provides enterprise-wide facilities management capabilities from a central storage and operational location located at the Building Operating Control Center in Building P-4000. The project's BAS will be openly competed and will be compatible to the existing EMCS since the project's BAS is specified as BACnet/IP open protocol. However, the integration of the BAS into the EMCS must be performed by the manufacturer of the EMCS to ensure accountability of the EMCS functioning properly and warranty of the system. Furthermore, the existing EMCS has gone through the DoD Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process (DIACAP) and is fully DIACAP accredited. Integration of the project's BAS into the EMCS through a third party may result in the DIACAP accreditation being lost. Specifications for EMCS integration that do not include the EMCS vendor integrating the BAS into the EMCS would result in a failure to achieve an important objective of this project, which is to integrate the mechanical controls of the Non-Commissioned Office Academy into the Fort Drum Trane EMCS. There are no alternatives to this approach that would not directly result in the failure to execute this portion of the project's scope of work. 4. Any vendor that wishes to provide an alternate source to the brand names above that is compatible with the above must provide a response with data supporting the claim within 5 business days of this announcement to New York District, Corps of Engineers, Contracting Division, and Attn: Loretta Parris at Loretta.e.parris@usace.army.mil. Telephone Number 917-790-8182. 5. This is a market survey and notification of intent only. This is not a request to respond to a solicitation. This project will be solicited at a future date.
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/USA/COE/DACA51/W912DS-17-S-0001/listing.html)
- Place of Performance
- Address: US Army Corps of Engineers, 26 Federal Plaza, New York, New York, 10278, United States
- Zip Code: 10278
- Zip Code: 10278
- Record
- SN04303666-W 20161015/161013234220-187569c6b77ef15905d0119810007313 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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