DESCRIPTION: 

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has a requirement for Big Twin Server to be utilized by the Software and Systems Division Team (SSD) at NIST, Gaithersburg, MD.

THIS IS A COMBINED SYNOPSIS/SOLICITATION FOR COMMERCIAL

ITEMS PREPARED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE FORMAT IN FAR SUBPART 12.6-STREAMLINED PROCEDURES FOR EVALUATION AND SOLICITATION

FOR COMMERCIAL ITEMS-AS SUPPLEMENTED WITH ADDITIONAL INFORMATION INCLUDED IN THIS NOTICE. THIS ANNOUNCEMENT CONSTITUTES THE ONLY SOLICITATION; PROPOSALS ARE BEING REQUESTED, AND A SEPARATE WRITTEN SOLICITATION DOCUMENT WILL NOT BE ISSUED.  THE SOLICITATION IS BEING ISSUED USING SIMPLIFIED ACQUISITION PROCEDURES UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF FAR PART 13.

This solicitation is a Request for Quotations (RFQ). The solicitation document and incorporated provisions and clauses are those in effect through Federal Acquisition Circular (FAC) 2005-95.

1352.215-72 INQUIRIES (APR 2010)

Offerors must submit all questions concerning this solicitation in writing to [email protected] Questions should be received no later than 5 calendar days after the issuance date of this solicitation. Any responses to questions will be made in writing, without identification of the questioner, and will be included in an amendment to the solicitation. Even if provided in other form, only the question responses included in the amendment to the solicitation will govern performance of the contract. 

(End of Provision)

The associated North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) code for this procurement is 334111 – Electronic Computer Manufacturing, with a small business size standard of 1,250 employees.

This acquisition is 100% set-aside for small business. 

All offerors shall provide a quotation for the following:

Schedule of Required Items

 The system will consist of (1) one Supermicro BigTwin server enclosure and 4 compute nodes

Specifications

1 enclosure:

• Supermicro SuperServer 2028BT-HNR+ - BigTwin - 24x NVMe - 2200W Redundant

4 compute nodes with each having the following components:

• 2 x Xeon E5-2680 v4 2.40 GHz 35 MB cache (120W)

• 512 GB of RAM (16 x 32GBPC4-19200 2400MHz DDR4 ECC Registered DIMM)

• 1 SSD boot drive (512GB Micron M1100 M.2 SATA 6.0Gb/s or equivalent performance); capacity >= 500GB

• 2 x NVMe SSD (1.2TB Intel SSD DC P3600 Series U.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 or equivalent performance)

• 1 I/O Module – Networking (Supermicro SIOM 1-Gigabit Ethernet Adapter AOC-MGP-i4M with 4 x RJ45 ports

• 1 Intel 10-Gigabit Ethernet Converged Network Adapter with 2 x RJ45 ports (Intel X540-T2 or equivalent performance)

• 1 Ubuntu Linux 16.04 LTS Server Edition (64-bit OS)

Brand Name Justification

The Software & Systems Division has a project on large scale computing, which is part of the National Strategic Computing Initiative focused on building the next generation of computers.  In order to benchmark and prototype the current state of the art, we have a requirement for advanced supercomputing chips.  The Intel Xeon Processor E5 series is the only such product on the market.

Provisions and Clauses:

The following provisions and clauses apply to this acquisition and are hereby incorporated by reference. All FAR clauses may be viewed at http://farsite.hill.af.mil/.

Provisions

52.212-1 Instructions to Offerors - Commercial Items

52.212-3 Offeror Representations and Certifications-Commercial Items

52.212-4 Contract Terms and Conditions—Commercial Items

52.212-5 Contract Terms and Conditions Required to Implement Statutes or Executive Orders—Commercial Items (APR 2010)-- including subparagraphs:

52.204-10 - Reporting Executive Compensation and First Tier Subcontract Awards

52.209-6 - Protecting the Government’s Interest when subcontracting with Contractor’s Debarred, Suspended or proposed for Debarment

52.219-6 - Notice of Total Small Business Set-Aside             

52.219-13 - Notice of Set-Aside of Orders

52.219-28 - Post Award Small Business Program Representation

52.222-3 - Convict Labor

52.222-19 - Child Labor - Cooperation with Authorities and Remedies;

52.222-21 - Prohibition of Segregated Facilities

52-222-26 - Equal Opportunity;

52.222-36 - Equal Opportunity for Workers with Disabilities

52.222-50 - Combating Trafficking in Persons

52.223-18 - Encouraging Contractor Policies to Ban Text Messaging While Driving

52.225-13 - Restriction on Certain Foreign Purchases;

52.232-33 - Payment by Electronic Funds Transfer- System for Award Management. 

Department of Commerce Acquisition Regulation (CAR) clauses. Please view the full text of these clauses at http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=8b5f22b07c12a52e8b29841ad60f1fd9&mc=true&tpl=/ecfrbrowse/Title48/48chapter13.tpl.

Commerce Acquisition Regulations (CAR) Provisions and Clauses:

1352.201-70 Contracting Officer’s Authority

1352.209-73 Compliance With The Laws

1352.209-74 Organizational Conflict of Interest

1352.237-71 Security Processing Requirements - Low Risk Contracts

NIST Local Clauses

NIST LOCAL 04 BILLING INSTRUCTIONS

(a) NIST prefers electronic Invoice/Voucher submissions and they should be emailed to [email protected]. (b) Each Invoice or Voucher submitted shall include the following: (1) Contract Number. (2) Contractor Name and Address. (3) Date of Invoice. (4) Invoice Number. (5) Amount of Invoice and Cumulative Amount Invoiced to-date. (6) Contract Line Item Number (CLIN).

(7) Description, Quantity, Unit of Measure, Unit Price, and Extended Price of Supplies/Services Delivered. (8) Prompt Payment Discount Terms, if Offered. (9) Any other information or documentation required by the contract. (c) In the event electronic submissions are not used, The

Contractor shall submit an original invoice or voucher in accordance with the payment provisions of this contract to: NIST: Accounts Payable Office 100 Bureau Drive, Mail Stop 1621 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-1621

NIST LOCAL 07

All contractor personnel shall read and be familiar with the Computer Security Policy at NIST which can be downloaded from the NIST internal web site at http//www i.nist.gov/cio/itsd/pp_nist/policy/policy_accnuse.html. This policy is hereby incorporated by reference as if fully set forth. The Contractor and its employee(s) and agents shall abide by the terms and conditions of the policy throughout the period of performance (including any exercised option periods) of this contract.

INSTRUCTIONS:

System for Award Management (SAM)

In accordance with FAR 52.204-7, the awardee must be registered in SAM (www.sam.gov) prior to award.  Refusal to register shall forfeit award.

Required Information

The government will not consider any quotation without the information required by this solicitation.

Due Date for Quotations

Offerors shall submit their proposals so that NIST receives them not later than 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, August 8, 2017.  FAX and hard-copy proposals shall not be accepted.  E-mail proposals shall be accepted at [email protected]. Offerors’ proposals shall not be deemed received by the Government until the proposal is entered the e-mail address inbox set forth above.   Late quotes will not be accepted.

Acceptance of Terms and Conditions: This is an open-market solicitation for equipment as defined herein.  The Government intends to award a Purchase Order as a result of this solicitation that will include the clauses set forth herein.  The proposal should include one of the following statements:

“The terms and conditions in the solicitation are acceptable to be included in the award document without modification, deletion, or addition.”

OR

“The terms and conditions in the solicitation are acceptable to be included in the award document with the exception, deletion, or addition of the following:

Offeror shall list exception(s) and rationale for the exception(s)

Note: This procurement is not being conducted under the GSA Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) program or another Government-Wide Area Contract (GWAC).  If an offeror submits a proposal based upon an FSS or GWAC contract, the Government will accept the quoted price.  However, the terms and conditions stated herein will be included in any resultant Purchase Order, not the terms and conditions of the offeror’s FSS or GWAC contract, and the statement required above shall be included in the proposal.

Offers shall submit quotations that clearly demonstrate compliance with the technical requirements of this solicitation, and that includes a total firm fixed price for the items in the schedule of required items

PROPOSAL EVALUATION:

Evaluation Factors

Award will be made to the offeror whose quotation offers lowest priced, technically acceptable solution.

Technical Capability: This is a brand-name requirement and substitute products will not be considered. To be technically acceptable, the quotation must clearly demonstrate compliance with the requirements of proposed CLIN structure and the incorporated specifications. No prototypes, demonstration models, used or refurbished instruments will be considered. Evaluation of technical capability shall be based on the information provided in the quotation. NIST will evaluate whether the offeror has demonstrated that its proposed equipment and service meets all minimum requirements. Quotations that do not demonstrate the proposed equipment meets all requirements will not be considered further for award.  If an offeror does not indicate whether its proposed equipment meets a certain minimum requirement, NIST will determine that it does not.

Price:  The Government will evaluate price for reasonableness.

1352.233-70 AGENCY PROTESTS (APR 2010)

  (a) An agency protest may be filed with either: (1) the contracting officer, or (2) at a level above the contracting officer, with the appropriate agency Protest Decision Authority. See 64 Fed. Reg. 16,651 (April 6, 1999)

            (b) Agency protests filed with the Contracting Officer shall be sent to the following address:        NIST/ACQUISITION MANAGEMENT DIVISION

                        ATTN: KEITH BUBAR, CONTRACTING OFFICER

100 Bureau Drive, MS 1640

                                    Gaithersburg, MD 20899

            (c) Agency protests filed with the agency Protest Decision Authority shall be sent to the following address:             NIST/ACQUISITION MANAGEMENT DIVISION

ATTN: HEAD OF THE CONTRACTING OFFICE (HCO)

100 Bureau Drive, MS 1640

                                    Gaithersburg, MD 20899

            (d) A complete copy of all agency protests, including all attachments, shall be served upon the Contract Law Division of the Office of the General Counsel within one day of filing a protest with either the Contracting Officer or the Protest Decision Authority.

            (e) Service upon the Contract Law Division shall be made as follows:

U.S. Department of Commerce

Office of the General Counsel

Chief, Contract Law Division

Room 5893

Herbert C. Hoover Building

14th Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20230.

FAX: (202) 482-5858  

1352.233-71 GAO AND COURT OF FEDERAL CLAIMS PROTESTS (APR 2010)

(a) A protest may be filed with either the Government Accountability Office (GAO) or the Court of Federal Claims unless an agency protest has been filed.

(b) A complete copy of all GAO or Court of Federal Claims protests, including all attachments, shall be served upon (i) the Contracting Officer, and (ii) the Contract Law Division of the Office of the General Counsel, within one day of filing a protest with either GAO or the Court of Federal Claims.

(c) Service upon the Contract Law Division shall be made as follows:

U.S. Department of Commerce

Office of the General Counsel

Chief, Contract Law Division

Room 5893

Herbert C. Hoover Building

14th Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20230.

FAX: (202) 482-5858

(End of clause)