he U.S. Department of Energy `s (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) intends to award a sole source contract to Standard and Poor?s Financial Services LLP (Standard & Poor), a large business, to provide licensed access to its Capital IQ (CIQ) and Ratings Direct services and Risk Solutions scorecards. The contract shall be for five years. In accordance with Competition in Contracting Act, 41 USC 253 [c] [1], as implemented by FAR 6.302-1 , other than full and open competition is authorized when there is only one responsible source and no other supplies and services will satisfy agency requirements. Standard & Poor is the only top tier credit rating agency whose ratings are compatible with the LPO internal credit rating scoring system. Further LPO utilizes custom scorecards created by and modeled after Standard & Poor which are not congruent to the methodologies used by other top tier credit agencies. As such, Standard & Poor is the only responsible source to fulfill the LPO requirement. This is a notice of intent and not a request for competitive proposals. No solicitation is available for this requirement. If a firm believes that DOE should not pursue this procurement with Standard & Poor then it should submit a capability statement and pricing information for the requirement by 11:00 a.m. EST on November 23, 2015 via email to
[email protected]. A determination by the Government to compete this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. Information will normally be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement.