Contract No. P12PX21856TAS: 14 1036 This J&A is also available at https://ideasec.nbc.gov/j2ee/opportunities.jsp In accordance with FAR 6.305 and FAR 5.406, this special notice publishes the Justification and Approvals for Other than Full and Open Competition. This is not a request for competitive proposals, bids, or quotes. The Government shall consider all responses received prior to the close date of this announcement. Written responses to this notice shall contain sufficient documentation to establish bona fide capability to fulfill the requirement. A solicitation is not available. Please email Contract Specialist, Christie VandenDries, at
[email protected] with responses or questions regarding this requirement. BACKGROUND: In January/February of 2011, Denali National Park and Preserve advertised a full and open competition though FedBizOps for a contract to perform spatial statistical analysis of plant occurrence data and create diversity models for the park based on these data. A contract (P9836110003) was awarded to Ver Hoef Statistical Consulting of Fairbanks, Alaska, who was the sole qualified applicant for this contract. No other offers were received in response to the solicitation. The work completed under this contract by Ver Hoef Statistical Consulting to date (period of performance ends February 29, 2012) has been highly successful, with excellent progress occurring on deliverables. A positive and productive working relationship has been established with this contractor through repeated required meetings as stipulated in this contract. There are a number of complicated statistical issues associated with this work that require specific relevant expertise and experience. These issues include a variety of topics that fall under the subject known as spatial statistics, a sub-discipline of statistics. In addition, the types of models that are envisioned for this project may need to incorporate information from a diverse set of original data sources which is facilitated by Bayesian inferential techniques, another growing subdiscipline of the statistical sciences. In addition, the data set assembled for this project is very large and will require the analyst to have considerable facility with programming and handling large datasets in order for it to be possible to accomplish on time and within budget. We have identified a further set of statistical analyses for this project that would allow us to meet the goals of the overall project that need to be accomplished once the current set of deliverables under contract P9836110003 are completed. Because of the familiarity of Ver Hoef Statistical Consulting with the data for the project, and their proven ability to provide high-quality, timely deliverables under the current contract, it would be a direct and tangible benefit to the Government to award this second contract to Ver Hoef Statistical Consulting. In addition, our direct experience from the previously advertised contract was that Ver Hoef Statistical Consulting was the sole qualified contractor to bid on the project and this is a logical follow-on to the existing contract. 1) FAR Statutory Authority cited: FAR 13.104 and 6.302-1, Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements. There were five criteria we considered in choosing an appropriate contractor:1. High level of performance in current contract and thus detailed familiarity and proven ability to produce sophisticated analyses using data structures in place for current project with very large and complicated dataset. Any other contractor would require considerable time to gain familiarity with this data set, costing the Govt. funds.2. Previous advertisement for consulting contract for this project only produced a single qualified applicant - Ver Hoef Statistical Consulting, a new competition for continuing analyses would likely have the same results.3. Mastery of spatial, classical and Bayesian statistics for development of spatially-explicit species distribution models 4. Very strong background in vegetation ecology of Alaskan ecosystems and ecological factors affecting the distribution of plants 5. Location in Fairbanks to facilitate frequent consultation during development phase of program6. Ability to work well with NPS staff collaborator and a strong interest in the subject of the project Dr. Jay Ver Hoef is the only contractor who meets all the requisite criteria-and in fact exceeds them. We have had nothing but excellent results working with Dr. Ver Hoef in the current project. In addition, this is a follow-on contract to a previously competed contract, in which Dr. Ver Hoef was the only offeror. 2) Nature and description of the supplies or services required to meet the agency's needs NPS seeks three major items from the Contractor:a. Perform statistical analyses and create spatial models that identify the important ecological attributes that control distribution and abundance for a set of 400 plant species, including mosses, lichens and vascular plants using a set of detailed covariate data from the Denali plot network- including soils parameters such as soil pH, organic layer depth, and nitrogen and carbon content.b. Set-up data analysis routines in R-statistical package that will allow us to integrate these additional analysi s routines into the web-based R-0Server statistical package that is currently sever on the UAF nuna web-server that the Supercomputing Center of UAF. This work will allow NPS employees to continue to use the statistical routines created by Ver Hoef Statistical Consulting as new data are acquired. Work with University personnel to ensure that analysis routoines work as designed on the web-based server.c. Provide concise, coherent and cogent written text describing specific statistical methods used for the data analyses described in the items above above. 3) A demonstration that the proposed contractor is the only source available to provide these services or goods (i.e. unique qualifications, proprietary rights, etc.): Dr. Ver Hoef has the unique qualifications that he has spent considerable time and effort working with the project data very successfully to date. He was the sole qualified applicant for the original contract advertisement, and it is certain the same situation would result from a new advertisement due to the similarities in requirements for the new set of work. In addition, the Government will save funds due to this contractor's high degree of familiarity with the current project. Any other contractor would require time to become familiar with the project data and would require time of the Govt. to provide background, which Ver Hoef Statistical Consulting will not require due to the fact that this is a follow-on contract, which will also result in a cost savings to the Government. 4) A description of the market research that was conducted and the results, or a statement of the reason a market research was not conducted: We advertised for three weeks for the current contract (with very similar types of requirements and skills the new set of duties will require) and received a single qualified offeror, we seek to award this follow-on contract to Ver Hoef Satatistical Consulting, which would save the Government considerable time and funds. 5) Any other facts supporting the use of other than full and open competition: All actions have been taken by the Government to remove or overcome barriers to competition before any subsequent acquisition for required supplies or services.