Recovery This notice is provided for information purposes only. NASA LaRCintends to issue a fixed-price contract to Kestrel Technologies, LLC entitled A SafetyCase Workbench. This competitive action will be funded by the American Reinvestment andRecovery Act (ARRA). This award results from a competitive selection under the NationalAeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Headquarters released NASA ResearchAnnouncement (NRA) for foundational research in support of the Aeronautics ResearchMission Directorate ARMD), entitled "Research Opportunities in Aeronautics (ROA) 2009under NNH09ZEA001N, Amendment 7, B.6 Verification and Validation of Flight CriticalSystems. The goal of the Verification and Validation of Flight-Critical Systems (VVFCS)project is to develop multidisciplinary verification and validation tools and techniquesthat advance safety assurance and certification of complex, networked, distributed flightcritical systems. Here flight critical systems are defined to be any system that directlycontrols the safe conduct of an aircrafts flight. This includes air and ground systems,concepts of operation as well as technology, and recognizes that human performance is akey factor in flight-critical systems and must be accounted for. The increasingcomplexity of flight critical systems proposed for the Next Generation Air TransportationSystem (NextGen) will require new paradigms and real-time distributed systeminfrastructures providing high levels of confidence and safety assurances. The cost ofproving a flight-critical system is safe is often expected to far surpass the costs for other aspects of design and implementation.In this effort, the Contractor will develop a prototype of a safety case tool in the formof a workbench. Similar to a craftsmens workbench, this virtual workbench willprovide the safety case practitioner with a set of tools, or modules, from which he orshe can plan, capture, analyze, and maintain safety cases. The workbench modules will capture specific elements of a safety case (arguments, claims,evidence including probabilistic evidence); will support infrastructure tasks, such asthe means to maintain historical data; and will support safety case planning and resourceestimation. Also, the Contractor will document a workbench Application Program Interface(API) to facilitate data exchange between the workbench modules and other tools. At the conclusion of this effort the Contractor will have completed a prototype of thesafety case workbench, a prototype and at least one refinement of each module, and willhave documented the workbench API. The contractor will also have demonstrated thecapabilities of the workbench across all modules through the use of a comprehensive unittest framework, and will have demonstrated the use of the API through an exampleinterface with at least one external analytical tool.The referenced solicitation is a broad agency announcement as specified in FAR 35.016 andNFS 1835.016. Additional information regarding the 2009 ROA solicitation can be found athttp://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/solicitations/summary.do?method =init&solId={8AA62753-0F6B-3791-4A43-3DEF562FA257}&path=open (ROA-2009 CompleteSolicitation as of November 24, 2009). This announcement will not result in a Request for Proposal; this announcement is forinformational purposes only. All questions should be submitted to the point of contact contained herein in writing viae-mail to the following address:
[email protected]