Notice of Intent (NOI) to Sole Source Solicitation Number: 36C10X 22Q0011 THIS IS NOTICE OF INTENT TO SOLE SOURCE TO THE UPTIME INSTITUTE (TUI), FOR DATA CENTER TIER CERTIFICATION This is not a request for competitive proposals. This is not a solicitation or request for offers. No solicitation package is available and telephone requests will not be honored. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Strategic Acquisition Center (SAC)- Frederick, MD, on behalf of the VA, Austin Information Technology Center (AITC), Austin, TX, intends to award a Firm Fixed Price (FFP), Sole Source contract to TUI for Professional Data Center membership with staff affiliation expert. DESCRIPTION: NOTICE OF INTENT TO AWARD A SOLE SOURCE CONTRACT TO TUI, for Professional Data Center membership with staff affiliation expert for an initial base year (12 months) with four (4) optional years. Market research was conducted and determined TUI is the only vendor capable of providing the required services that meet the requirements of the AITC. Period of Performance (POP): 29 March 2022 through 28 March 2027 The authority for applying the Simplified Procedures for Commercial Items is FAR 13.106-1(b)(1). The intent is to procure these services on a sole source basis. No solicitation will be posted to Contract Opportunities. The primary North American Classification System Code (NAICS) is 813920 Professional Organizations. The most current Business Size Rating for this NAICS is $15,000,000.00 Capable parties may identify their interests and authorization to respond to this requirement by November 8th, 2021 at 1000 AM Eastern Standard Time (EST). A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed award upon response to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Contracting Officer. 1. Description The AITC requires the means to communicate with subject matter experts in the data center information technology professional community. Additionally, AITC requires to receive regularly updated information concerning data center reliability through an online membership service. Finally, AITC is in need of a full system assessment of the current data center in order to ascertain whether critical and non-critical improvements are required to ensure that the data center conforms to the industry standards for complete system reliability. 2. Scope of Work The VA-AITC is seeking a Professional Data Center membership with staff affiliation expert (i.e., professional engineers) knowledge on data center reliability for continuation operation to support Veterans services. The membership shall provide VA-AITC access to information such as; product reviews and focus groups, memberships in technical support groups, research paper development, key-note speakers at private seminars, defective product alerts, as well as the ability to provide customized technical services. The organization shall be recognized internationally for its availability of in-house professionals to provide impartial information on technical questions and if they are unable to provide an answer, they shall be able to find a person(s) working in this industry who would be able to answer critical questions related to the operation of a Data Center. This organization shall also maintain an encompassing library of current technical and non-technical information. This organization shall also provide unbiased knowledgeable third-party consulting expertise. This same organization is a leader in the industry at setting industry standards for reliability and maintainability of Data Centers throughout the world. Uptime is the only organization that can evaluate Data Centers and establish facility Tier Certification (i.e., Tier I, II, III, IV, & etc.), which recognized as a facility reliability standard. 3. Product Requirements Data Center Equipment review, historical equipment failure rates and defective equipment alerts. Also, maintain records of your Data Center failures. Area Group member focus groups and technical support. Access to research papers. Access to private Data Center Reliability technical seminars with experts in Data Center operation, as keynote speakers. Ability to provide technical expert review of data center design drawings and construction documents for reliability (i.e., Tier I, II, III, IV, & etc.). Member access to expert (i.e., professional engineer) via phone or e-mail to respond to membership questions on Data Center reliability. If they do not know the answer to your question, they will find a person(s) working in this industry who would be able to answer the questions. Tier I Data Center, Basic A Tier I data center is susceptible to disruptions from both planned and unplanned activity. It has computer power distribution and cooling, but it may or may not have a raised floor, a UPS, or an engine generator. If it does have UPS or generators, they are single-module systems and have many single points of failure. The infrastructure should be completely shut down on an annual basis to perform preventive maintenance and repair work. Urgent situations may require more frequent shutdowns. Operation errors or spontaneous failures of site infrastructure components will cause a data center disruption. Tier II Data Center, Redundant Components Tier II facilities with redundant components are slightly less susceptible to disruptions from both planned and unplanned activity than a basic data center. They have a raised floor, UPS, and engine generators, but their capacity design is Need plus One (N+1), which has a single-threaded distribution path throughout. Maintenance of the critical power path and other parts of the site infrastructure will require a processing shutdown. Tier III Data Center, Concurrently Maintainable Tier III level capability allows for any planned site infrastructure activity without disrupting the computer hardware operation in any way. Planned activities include preventive and programmable maintenance, repair and replacement of components, addition or removal of capacity components, testing of components and systems, and more. For large sites using chilled water, this means two independent sets of pipes. Sufficient capacity and distribution must be available to simultaneously carry the load on one path while performing maintenance or testing on the other path. Unplanned activities such as errors in operation or spontaneous failures of facility infrastructure components will still cause a data center disruption. Tier III sites are often designed to be upgraded to Tier IV when the client s business case justifies the cost of additional protection. Tier IV Data Center, Fault Tolerant Tier IV provides site infrastructure capacity and capability to permit any planned activity without disruption to the critical load. Fault-tolerant functionality also provides the ability of the site infrastructure to sustain at least one worst-case unplanned failure or event with no critical load impact. This requires simultaneously active distribution paths, typically in a System+System configuration. Electrically, this means two separate UPS systems in which each system has N+1 redundancy. Because of fire and electrical safety codes, there will still be downtime exposure due to fire alarms or people initiating an Emergency Power Off (EPO). Tier IV requires all computer hardware to have dual power inputs as defined by the Institute s Fault-Tolerance. Tier IV site infrastructures are the most compatible with high availability IT concepts that employ CPU clustering, RAID DASD, and redundant communications to achieve reliability, availability, and serviceability. Current Vista facility data centers would fall into the first three tiers, with some being Tier-I and very few at the Tier-III level. Ultimately, VA data center facilities should achieve an acceptable level of confidence (tier) within the VA s infrastructure in order to support enterprise-level systems such as HealtheVet systems. In order to establish and implement a minimum level of standards for VA data centers, a base set of standards must be established and used in a survey of facility data centers. This Notice of Intent (NOI) is not a request for Proposals or Quotations. No solicitation document exists, and no telephone or email inquiries will be accepted. No contract award will be made on the basis of proposals, or quotations received in response to this notice. Interested persons may identify their interest and capability to respond to the requirement and should furnish detailed data concerning their capabilities to provide services sought including pricing data and technical data sufficient enough to determine that a comparable source to the Government is available. The Government may consider all Expressions of Interest (EOI) received prior to November 8, 2021 by 1000 Eastern Standard Time (EST). A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. Information received will be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement. Responses to this notice must be emailed to Maribel Fratina at email:
[email protected] and received by November 8, 2021 by 1000 EST. Submitters are responsible for ensuring their EOI reaches the designated Contracting Officer on-time.