Description
THIS NOTICE IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND IS INTENDED TO PROVIDE NOTIFICATION OF THE USE OF FUNDS AUTHORIZED UNDER THE AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT OF 2009 (ARRA) ON THIS CONTRACT. The United States Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency, awarded a contract to TORRES Advanced Enterprise Solutions, LLC on April 1, 2009 for project management services. This contract action is a modification to add Recovery Act funds in the obligated amount of $1,018,066 to the contract. This is only available to the aforementioned contractor under contract AG-645S-C-09-0011. ARRA funds will be assigned to the contract under contract line item number 0004. The projected award date for obligation of ARRA funds to the contract is 05/27/2009. This project will: • Support activities to plan, manage, control and govern the execution of the MIDAS program • Support the acquisition process with planning, quality assurance, performance measures, cost/budget estimates, and source selection criteria • Support capital planning and preparation of the various Capital Planning & Investment Control (CPIC) documents needed for the yearly submission to the Office of Management and Budget • Support the preparation of budgets, cost estimates, risk adjusted costs development, performance work breakdown structure costs development, benefits cost development, and development of an earned value management system • Support planning, analysis and reporting of enterprise architecture and strategic alignment with other modernization initiatives • Provide progress reports and earned value management reporting MIDAS is an initiative to streamline FSA business processes and develop an effective long-term IT system and architecture for FSA farm program delivery. MIDAS will replace FSA’s current farm programs information technology structure of nationally distributed systems with a centralized system that modernizes the delivery of farm programs, improves customer service and satisfaction, achieves federal compliance, and supports USDA and FSA strategic plans. The MIDAS PMO effort will define, plan, monitor, control and document processes to ensure FSA’s modernization initiative is delivered within defined scope, quality, time, and cost constraints. To reduce risks associated with this effort, an ANSI Standard 748 certified Earned Value Management System will be used to report schedule and cost performance and track, monitor and correct any performance issues. This project will establish the MIDAS PMO and allow the governance process to commence. The MIDAS effort allows FSA to begin developing a customer-centric modernization initiative that will ultimately provide USDA customers with faster, more secure, and more accurate program payments. The award was made non-competitively as authorized by FAR 6-302-5(b)(4) under the 8(a) Program pursuant to 15 U.S.C. 637. A time-and-materials/labor-hour contract was determined to be the only type of contract suitable for this effort. The nature of the work on this contract involves a number of factors that are outside the control of the contractor that could impact the contract performance. Because of this a fixed-price contract would not be suitable for this contract without a significant mark up in price to compensate for risks.