SOLICITATION NOTICE
R -- Performance Measurements Requirements
- Notice Date
- 7/24/2003
- Notice Type
- Solicitation Notice
- Contracting Office
- Export - Import Bank of the United States, Office of Contracting Services, Contracting Services, 811 Vermont Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC, 20571
- ZIP Code
- 20571
- Solicitation Number
- EXIM-03-Q-0028
- Response Due
- 8/15/2003
- Archive Date
- 8/30/2003
- Point of Contact
- Linda James, Contracting Officer, Phone 202-565-3335, Fax 202-565-3528, - Mark Pitra, Contracting Officer, Phone (202) 565-3338, Fax (202) 565-3528,
- E-Mail Address
-
katie.james@exim.gov, mark.pitra@exim.gov
- Description
- REQUEST FOR QUOTATION RFQ: EXIM-03-Q-0028 DUE DATE: August 15, 2003 ISSUED: July 24, 2003 Potential Offerors, You are hereby invited to submit a quotation (technical and cost/price proposal) for the Export-Import Bank of the US's (Ex-Im Bank, or Bank) Performance Measurement requirement. The attached "Instructions to Offerors for Proposal Submission, Evaluation, and Award" gives details on the required submissions. Quotations must be signed by an official authorized to bind the offeror, and it shall contain a statement that the proposal is firm for at least 90 days from the date set for receipt of offers, including any extensions thereof. The offer must set forth accurate and complete information as required by the solicitation Statement of Objectives and the "Instructions to Offerors for Proposal Submission, Evaluation, and Award. After determining the successful offer, the Bank intends to award a fixed-price hourly rate, level-of-effort contract. We look forward to receiving your response. Sincerely, L. Katie. James Contracting Officer INSTRUCTIONS TO OFFERORS FOR PROPOSAL SUBMISSION, EVALUATION, AND AWARD Proposal Submission, Evaluation, and Award for the Export-Import Bank of the US?s Performance Measurement Requirement 1. Submission The Bank is competing a Performance Measurement Requirement. This is an unrestricted solicitation and is open to all contractors. The Government plans to award one level of effort contract for this requirement. Four copies of the proposal for the requirement are due on or before 12:00 a.m. on August 15, 2003. The Bank's mailing or courier address is Export Import Bank of the United States, Room 1023, 811 Vermont Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20571, Attention: Katie James, Contracting Officer. The voice phone number is (202) 565-3335 and the fax number is (202) 565-3528. Ms. James' email address is katie.james@exim.gov. Offerors are reminded that one signed copy of the SF 1449 must be completed and returned with your proposal. Also Clause 52.212-3, Offeror Representations and Certifications?Commercial Items, must also be completed and returned with your proposal. 2. Proposal Submissions and Evaluation Schedule Event Responsibility Date Issue RFQ (Email to POC) Government July 24, 2003 Cut-Off Date for Questions Offerors July 31, 2003 Proposals Due Offerors August 15, 2003 Selection & Issue Contract Government August 18-26, 2003 Contract Performance Starts Awardee September 1, 2003 3. Proposal Documents Each offeror's proposal must contain the documents listed below. a. Statement of Work: Offeror must address how they will meet the Export-Import Bank?s Performance Measurement requirement by submitting a Statement of Work (SOW), which addresses how the contractor will manage this requirement in accordance with the Statement of Objectives (SOO) issued with the solicitation. The SOW will be incorporated into the contract and become contractually binding. b. Resumes: Resumes of key personnel should be submitted. There is no required format, but the offeror should use the resume to demonstrate the qualifications of proposed key personnel for their positions and their ability to satisfy the Bank's requirements. Resumes shall include points of contact for all experience during the last four years, including the name and current phone number of clients or employers that can verify the performance of the proposed person. The Government intends to check references by phone as time allows. The Government reserves the right not to check references. c. Cost/Price Proposal: For Line Item 0001, the offeror shall indicate the estimated hours, labor categories, and hourly rates proposed for this requirement (see RFQ, Page 2). Line Item 0002 is a ?to be determined? line item and will be negotiated if the Government decides to exercise Line Item 0002 for additional phases of this requirement. Each offeror must note that the RFQ states that labor categories and rates listed for Line Item 0001 will also apply to Line Item 0002. Only estimated hours will be negotiated if Line Item 0002 is activated for the contract. Each offeror?s proposal must include an explanation of proposed labor categories and rates. The explanation must clarify the composition of the estimated hours and labor rates by providing a cost breakdown. d. Statement of Work Composition: The SOW must include the following information: ? Background: Describe the need for the requirement, the current environment, and the Bank's mission as it relates to this requirement. ? Applicable Documents: List legal, regulatory, policy, and security, etc. documents that are relevant to this requirement. Include publication number, title, version, date, etc. ? Contractor Tasks: This is the heart of the SOW and should include details on how the Contractor will complete this requirement for the Bank. There should be a SOW chapter for the technical and management approach during the initial phase of the project and a separate chapter for technical and management approaches during subsequent phases of the project. Offerors are reminded that part of the technical and management approach should be a project timetable with important milestones for both completing the project and milestones for proposed project deliverables (see ?Evaluation Criteria? for additional information). ? Organizational Conflict of Interest (OCI): In accordance with RFQ Clause H-101, each offeror must complete an OCI Mitigation Plan (see ?Evaluation Criteria? for additional information). ? Quality Control/Performance Standards: SOW must be performance based and include measurable performance metrics with a list of proposed inspection methods and proposed acceptance levels. ? Corporate Experience/Past Performance and Key Personnel Experience: Contractor should list all relevant corporate experience. Contractors past performance and sub-contractor?s past performance should be listed. Resumes of all key personnel should be listed. 4. Down Select and Discussions The Government reserves the right to conduct a proposal down select and only hold discussions with the offeror(s) who best meet the solicitation evaluation criteria. Discussions will not be held with any offeror eliminated during the down select. The Government also reserves the right not to hold discussions with any of the offerors if the Contracting Officer determines that discussions are not necessary for this requirement. 5. Basis for Award The Government plans to award a contract to the offeror whose proposal is most advantageous and is the best value to the Government. Technical excellence is more important than cost/price and the Government reserves the right to award to other than the low bidder. Each technical evaluation factor and cost realism, and reasonableness will be given an Adjectival Rating of Outstanding, Very Good, Average, Poor or Not Applicable. 6. Evaluation Criteria The technical evaluation factors for award, in descending order of importance, are as follows: ? Corporate Experience/Past Performance ? Technical and Management Approach ? Organizational Conflict of Interest ? Key Personnel ? Corporate Experience/Past Performance. The Government will evaluate the relevance and applicability of the offeror's corporate experience and past performance to the successful completion of the requirement. Relevant past performance information of the contractor and proposed subcontractors must be included. ? Technical Approach and Management Approach. The Government will evaluate the offeror's SOW for the technical and management approach that best satisfies the performance measurement requirement that were listed in the SOO. The technical and management approach will receive two adjectival ratings. The first rating will be for the initial phase of the project (line item 0001) and the second rating will be the offeror?s conception of subsequent phases of the performance measurement project. There should be a SOW chapter for the technical and management approach during the initial phase of the project and a separate chapter for technical and management approaches during subsequent phases of the project. Offerors are reminded that part of the technical and management approach should be a project timetable with important milestones for both completing the project and milestones for proposed project deliverables. ? Organizational Conflict of Interest (OCI). The Government is concerned that the contractor awarded this contract could have the opportunity to obtain proprietary information that could effect financial transactions of the Bank and might also effect private sector competition. Page 2 of the RFQ lists Clause H-101. The clause states, ?In accordance with FAR 9.504, the Contracting Officer has determined the potential for perceived or actual Organizational Conflict of Interest (OCI) issues related to this acquisition. Specifically, the potential OCI issue involves access to proprietary information, including confidential business information submitted to Ex-Im Bank by outside parties. To the extent possible, Ex-Im Bank intends to limit the successful offeror's access to such information. Nonetheless, as part of their offer, each potential source must identify potential OCIs and must provide an OCI mitigation plan that addresses, in detail, how they plan to mitigate these issues. An example of a potential mitigant would be to agree to limit the interchange between the organizational unit that is performing the work under the contract and those units that ordinarily interact with Ex-Im Bank. Mitigation plans will be evaluated as part of the basis for award. Proper implementation of an adequate OCI Mitigation Plan is considered critical to the performance of the contract work. The contract award will contain the requirement to implement the approved, agreed OCI Mitigation Plan.? Each offeror must submit an OCI mitigation plan that addresses how they will mitigate any potential for gaining an unfair competitive advantage in future contracts or financial transactions with Ex-Im Bank. Each offeror?s OCI mitigation plan will be evaluated for quality, technical soundness, and feasibility. ? Key Personnel. The Government will evaluate the offeror on the experience, skills and qualifications of the proposed Key Personnel to successfully complete the requirement. The Government will evaluate the proposed Key Personnel's ability to successfully complete the requirements based on their recent past success and productivity on relevant projects. 7. Data Release Restrictions ? No offeror shall disclose any technical or programmatic information that they receive about the Bank or its systems (not already available to the public) without the specific approval of the Contractor Officer. All offerors shall submit certification of their agreement not to disclose this information as a condition of award. The successful offeror will be required to sign the Bank?s standard non-disclosure form. ? Offerors submitting restrictive data shall mark it in accordance with the FAR Clause 52.215-1 Instructions to Offerors?Competitive Acquisition. Statement of Objectives: Performance Measurement Project 1. Background: In support of the President?s Management Agenda to make government more market-driven and citizen centered, The Export-Import Bank of the U.S. (Ex-Im Bank or Bank) reorganized in October 2002. The general objectives of the reorganization were to enhance productivity and customer service. As a result of the reorganization, two former single-product divisions, the Insurance Division and the Trade Finance Division, were merged into for a single unit that provides all Bank products and manages customer relationships. A new business unit was created to focus solely on credit and risk management, including credit underwriting of transactions. 2. Purpose. With the new organizational structure established, Ex-Im Bank has begun a program to enhance its business processes to support the objectives of the reorganization. As an initial step, the Bank recently adopted operational performance measures to improve: (i) transaction efficiency and cycle time, (ii) resource utilization, and (iii) customer satisfaction. The Bank seeks to use a disciplined process methodology with demonstrated success in a financial services institution to guide its process improvements and meet its performance goals. The initial phase of this project is process enhancements that will be of significant value to the customers of the Bank focusing on methods to shorten the cycle time for Medium Term products. These methods would result in ?low impact process changes? (see Glossary). Loan disbursement is not a part of the initial phase of this requirement. 3. Status of performance measurement at Ex-Im Bank. (a) The Bank has adopted performance measures and measurement methods. (i) Transaction efficiency and cycle time. Transaction efficiency will be measured by the number of labor/hours per transaction, or component of transactions. Cycle time will be measured by the number of business days between selected milestones of the transaction process. (ii) Resource utilization. Resource utilization will be measured as a percentage of the level of authorizations committed per fiscal year compared with the budget authority made available by Congress. (iii) Customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction will be measured by a survey. The Bank periodically performs customer satisfaction surveys. However, measurement of transaction volume or of repeat business is not part of that survey. (b) The Bank?s initial focus will be on cycle time reduction. Based on discussions with a range of Bank customers, including exporters, buyers, brokers and lenders, reducing transaction cycle time is the improvement of most significant and immediate value to customers. As the Bank implements performance measures, its initial goal is to put into service a plan for measuring, reporting, and managing cycle time. (c) The Bank has begun a pilot program to reduce cycle time for its medium-term transactions. (i) Performance goals. The Bank?s medium term products (loan, guaranty, and insurance) comprise about 500 transactions annually. The Bank has adopted two cycle-time performance goals: ? approving 80% of requests within 20 business days of application (compared to a historical average 63% within 20 business days.); and ? as a subset of the above cycle, completing the credit underwriting component of 80% of the medium-term transactions within 15 business days. (ii) Reporting The Bank has begun monthly performance reporting to groups of its most active customers. To support these improvements, the Bank has simplified and streamlined its application process and clarifying its credit information requirements. (iii) In reviewing the application process, the Bank discovered that it was not collecting the correct information in some cases, and in other cases significant portions of the information needed was not requested in the application. Underwriting developed a supplement to the official application to obtain the additional information needed for application processing. 4. Scope of initial phase. (a) The Bank will approach the project in phases, with the first phase focused on refining and operationalizing the medium-term prototype from receipt of application to approval, focusing on near-term, low-impact process changes that will assist us in meeting the two cycle-time goals. The transaction application process has five sequential components: (1) mail room; (2) the central applications and process unit for the initial review for completeness; (3) Trade Finance & Insurance (TF&I) for a more in depth completeness review; (4) Underwriting; and (5) return TF&I to be put in final form for approval. The approval level depends on the amount of the transaction. (b) Constraints. This project will be subject to the following constraints: (i) For the initial phase, the two cycle time goals for the medium-term products will remain constant. (ii) For the initial phase, no substantive changes will be made to the application forms. (iii) The initial phase will result in recommendations, not implementation of any changes. (c) For the proposal, we expect the contractor to design a Phase 1 work plan, using a disciplined process methodology, focusing on the metrics, processing improvements, analysis and reporting procedures for the medium term transactions. The successful contractor will be expected to implement their proposed Phase 1 Work Plan upon award of the contract. We expect that Phase 1 would result in recommendations in 60-90 days. At the end of Phase 1, we will review the program and decide on the scope and sequence of follow-on phases. 5. Scope of subsequent project phase: Depending on the success of the first phase, additional closely related phases, not yet defined, are anticipated and may be awarded to the successful offeror without additional competition. Each offeror?s SOW will present proposed methodologies for subsequent phases to this requirement. 6. Technical approach (a) Project Plan. The Bank seeks to use a disciplined process methodology with demonstrated success in a financial services institution to guide its process improvements. The Bank envisions that the complete plan will encompass answers to the following questions: (i) Performance metrics and indicators for cycle time and efficiency. ? Definition. Do the proposed performance indicators align with the goals? Do they measure the improvements that are most valuable for the customer? For example, should the Bank?s cycle time goal include the time from transaction approval to disbursement? How can variability in the transaction process be eliminated? ? Measurement. Do the Bank?s information and management systems have the capability to provide complete, accurate, and timely measurements for these performance indicators? In other projects Ex-Im Bank is working on an enterprise architect requirement and also on other IT projects. We are interested in IT solutions that may help with this process, but we do not believe that an IT solution alone will fully address our performance measurement requirement. Attachment 1 to this SOO is an enterprise architecture chart. It is attached for informational purposes only. The Bank does not currently have an automated work flow process but one is being developed under a collateral project. ? Analysis and Reporting. What is the best way to analyze and report this information to management, employees, and customers? (b) Improvements. How can the performance measures be used to enhance the Bank?s capabilities and effect changes of benefit to customers? How can the Bank institutionalize its capabilities to support continuous improvement in its business processes? (i) Automation and streamlining. How could standardization and automation of forms and requirements for information improve the clarity, speed, and accuracy of transactions for customers? (ii) Improving support for multiple products. As part of moving from a product-based to a customer-based structure, how could the Bank enhance its capabilities for one-stop shopping and service for all its products? (iii) Cost ROM/ROI. What is the rough order of magnitude (ROM) of the cost of implementing the recommended changes and what return on investment (ROI) could be expected? 7. Glossary Terms: ? Bank?s Products: Loans, loan guarantees, and insurance policies issued to financial institutions and exports of U.S. goods and services. ? Low-Impact Process Changes: Changes that do not require Bank reorganization and retraining efforts or major technical changes. ? Medium Term Products: Loans, loan guarantees, and insurance policies with financed amounts up to $10 million and repayment terms less than seven (7) years. ? Medium Term Transactions: Transactions involving the Bank's Medium-term Products. ? Resource Utilization: The percentage of the level of authorizations committed per fiscal year compared with the budget authority made available by Congress ? Transaction: The processing, approval, documentation, and servicing of a request for a loan, loan guarantee, or insurance policy. For the purpose of Phase I of the project, the definition of a transaction will be limited to the application processing and approval components of the process. ? Transaction Efficiency: The number of labor/hours per transaction, or component of transactions. ATTACHMENT 1 ? STATEMENT OF OBJECTIVES PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT PROJECT Figure 1. Current Architecture vs. Future Architecture Source: Gartner, 2003
- Place of Performance
- Address: 811 Vermont Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C.
- Zip Code: 20571
- Country: USA
- Zip Code: 20571
- Record
- SN00382277-W 20030726/030724215157 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
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