FAA Administrative Voice Enterprise Services (FAVES)Request for Information
Abstract
1. Introduction
This Market Survey/RFI is issued in accordance with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Acquisition Management System (AMS) Section T3.2.1.2.1 Market Research and Analysis. Interested parties are advised that:
b" This is not a Screening Information Request (SIR) or Request for Proposals;
b" The FAA is not seeking or accepting unsolicited proposals;
b" The FAA will not pay for any information received or costs incurred in responding to this Market Survey/RFI;
b" Response to this announcement will be used for informational and planning purposes only;
b" This announcement should not be construed as a commitment of any type by the FAA to take or not take any action; and
b" No evaluation letters or results will be issued to respondents to this Market Survey.
2. Purpose
The purpose for this Market Survey is to request industry feedback regarding development of an acquisition strategy for obtaining services to complete full implementation of the FAVES Enterprise. The FAA currently acquires FAVES Enterprise services through Contract No. DTFAWA-10-D-00003 with General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), which expires October 31, 2020. The FAA estimates that the completion of the migration of its remaining targeted sites to the FAVES enterprise will take approximately three years beyond the end of the current FAVES contract.
The FAA has a need to:
Sustain current operations and maintenance (O&M) of all FAA administrative voice services, both FAVES enterprise systems and services and legacy administrative telephone systems and services.
Enable continued time-sensitive replacement of multiple failing or obsolete legacy administrative Private Branch Exchange (PBX) systems that are either at end of support or end of life status. Complete the migration of remaining targeted legacy telephone systems to the FAVES Enterprise.
Following migration and completion of the FAVES Enterprise, the FAA plans to issue a competitive procurement for the acquisition of sustainment, technical refresh and operations and maintenance support of all FAVES services beyond year 2023.
3. Background
FAVES is enabling the FAA to consolidate and centralize the management and technical responsibilities associated with providing administrative voice services across the agency. FAVES has established a modern, integrated administrative voice enterprise architecture that is providing standardized voice control and associated services to FAVES sites. Under the FAVES contract, FAA obtains Unified Communications, Contact Center, Conferencing and Video services that include equipment and software, professional services, engineering and operations. FAVES has provided the FAA with the capability to evolve its administrative voice services over time as facilities grow, relocate, consolidate and/or close, while migrating to a centralized enterprise as existing legacy phone assets are maximized to the best extent possible. FAVES also supports the FAAbs changing workplace by providing telecommuting and user mobility services.
The scope of the FAAbs administrative voice enterprise includes National Airspace System (NAS) operational facilities and administrative offices such as the legacy regional offices. The distinction is that all FAVES services are badministrativeb in nature, meaning that their primary role is to support agency business communications as opposed to NAS operational communications such as air traffic control. All FAVES equipment and assets are FAA owned and contractor operated and maintained.
FAVES provides mission critical everyday telephone and conferencing services, including desk phones, soft phones, voicemail, over 35,000 enterprise conferences per month, secure conferences, video conferences, contact/call center services and national enhanced 911 emergency services (e911) to over 76,000 FAA employees, aviation industry, government and public users (e.g. - contact centers, U.S. Congress, Media, Flight Services, Public information & public phone calls/conferences).
Current FAAbs administrative voice switch inventory consists of 706 facilities. These facilities range from FAA headquarters, to Service Area and legacy Regional Headquarters, to campus environments (i.e. the William J. Hughes Technical Center (WJHTC) and the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center (MMAC)), and other staffed facilities. In some cases, facilities that are not permanently staffed also require administrative voice services to support technicians who visit the site. While most of the administrative voice enterprise facilities are in the continental United States (CONUS), there are also facilities outside the CONUS including, but not limited to: Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, American Samoa, and Guam. FAA international offices in foreign locations such as Frankfurt, Brussels, and Singapore also have FAVES services. To date 450 facilities have been migrated to the FAVES Enterprise.
The FAA has a need for continued FAVES implementation, operations and maintenance services for up to three additional years beyond the current FAVES contract, which ends October 2020, in order to complete migration of remaining legacy sites to the FAVES enterprise. The FAA must also concurrently provide critical ongoing operations and maintenance of existing enterprise and legacy switches, tools and services. During this 36-month period, FAA anticipates rapid migration of an additional 256 smaller sites to complete the FAVES Enterprise, totaling 706 sites. The migration of the remaining 256 sites as well as the operations and maintenance of the entire FAVES Enterprise are included within the scope of this requirement.
The FAA must complete migration of remaining legacy sites to FAVES, to ensure that mission-critical services remain stable during several other major FAA telecommunications and IT transitions planned to occur over the next 3-5 years. One of the major transitions is the GSA Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) program, which will cause a significant transformation of the FAAbs underlying administrative voice and data telephone service connections and is scheduled to begin in FY 2020. The FAA also anticipates it will be fully engaged in transitioning FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI) services to the upcoming FAA Enterprise Services (FENS) contract during this timeframe. The EIS and FTI will provide all underlying Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) voice and data inter-facility connectivity within the FAA. All FAA Administrative Voice systems, including legacy telephone systems and FAVES enterprise systems, rely on GFE telecommunications connections that are acquired from the FAAbs GSA Networx contract (which will transition to EIS) and the FTI contract (which will transition to FENS). The planned transitions to EIS and FENS present major challenges and risks to the FAAbs telecommunications network infrastructure. If replacement of current failing or obsolete PBX systems are delayed and/or migration of the remaining sites to FAVES is interrupted, then FAVES compatibility will not be achieved, and additional accretive risks and costs will need to be considered.
The FAVES Enterprise must be completed to reduce risk and provide a stable, operating environment, when virtually all FAA GFE commercial telco connections that FAVES relies on will be undergoing some type of transition or transformation. This includes all FAA telecommunications bdial-toneb connections, Toll-Free services, FAVES Primary Rate Interface (PRI) circuits and FTI Mission Support Wide Area Network (MS-WAN) connections. Risks to the FAAbs mission critical administrative voice services will already be extremely high with the underlying agency telephony and WAN connections (EIS/FTI/FENS) undergoing technology transitions and transformations during this timeframe.
4. Constraints
a. The FAA faces a very tight funding environment with respect to the continued operations and maintenance of FAA legacy telephone systems and the FAVES Enterprise. Additional funding beyond day-to-day operational requirements will not be available to support the development of any new capabilities nor to support parallel operations for any transition period from the incumbent contractor to a new FAVES contractor. Interested parties will be expected to absorb costs for any transition or new solution, with regard to a new contract award. Any transition to a new FAVES contractor would need to be achieved without disruption to on-going administrative voice services and the FAVES Enterprise.
b. The FAVES contractor must sustain operations and maintenance (O&M) of all current FAA administrative voice services and infrastructure, both FAVES Enterprise services and legacy administrative telephone systems. This includes O&M for desk phones, soft phones, enterprise voicemail, over 35,000 enterprise conferences per month, (includes secure conferences), FAVES Portal web tools, FAA contact/call center services and national enhanced 911 emergency services (e911) to over 76,000 FAA employees, aviation industry, government and public users.
c. The FAVES contractor must continue uninterrupted replacement of multiple failing or obsolete legacy administrative Private Branch Exchange (PBX) systems that are either at end of support or end of life status.
d. The FAVES Enterprise architecture is built on the Avaya Aura Unified Communications platform which provides multiple cores and a set of seamless components that currently integrate with FAA GFE networks and telecommunications to provide comprehensive network call control, local site survivability and unified communications. Together, these components deliver a suite of enterprise services to FAA and public users. The FAVES contractor must complete migration of remaining legacy telephone systems to the FAVES Enterprise during this timeframe to achieve compatible administrative voice services, provide stability during other major FAA telecom transitions and provide enterprise scalability to accommodate future growth and unplanned events, including disaster recovery and continuity of operations.
e. FAVES includes short-term and long-term use of existing government-owned switches, key systems, user stations, enterprise infrastructure, software, licenses and ancillary equipment. All FAVES equipment and assets are FAA owned and contractor operated and maintained.
f. All telecommunications network connectivity is government-furnished, via various industry telecommunications services leased from General Services Administration (GSA) or FAA contract vehicles. The FAA will also use the same GSA contracts to establish toll-free (800/888) numbers mapped to the FAAbs administrative voice enterprise. As the FAA continues to migrate to the FAVES Enterprise, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) connections will be provided by the FAAbs secure Mission Support Wide Area Network (MS-WAN) or equivalent.
5. Questions
a. Assuming a contract award date in the 4th Quarter, FY 2020, how long do you anticipate it would take you to transition from the incumbent contractor to full operational capability?
b. Please identify any risk and risk mitigation strategies you would use to minimize disruption to FAA administrative communications during the transition from the incumbent contractor to a new contractor. Please include your approach to providing 7x24x365 system monitoring, help desk support, spare parts inventory, service restoration, enterprise software patches/upgrades, software license management, routine corrective maintenance and emergency maintenance during this timeframe.
c. The current FAVES enterprise architecture is based on the Avaya Aura Unified Communications platform. If you would offer a different enterprise platform or suite of equipment to complete the FAVES Enterprise, please describe how would you ensure integration, centralization, and compatibility during implementation and operations? Please also describe the commercial standards supported by your proposed enterprise solution and the extent to which your solution would require redesign, modification, or unique components or interfaces to integrate with the current Avaya based FAVES enterprise.
d. All FAVES equipment and assets are FAA-owned and contractor operated. Please describe your approach to provide all current FAVES operations and maintenance (O&M) support per the attached FAVES Statement of Work, to include dedicated on-site technicians.
e. Please describe your understanding of as well as how you would provide continuity of services during ongoing implementation of replacement systems and implementation of technical refreshes with minimum service disruption and security risk exposure.
f. Although most of FAA sites are integrated into the FAVES Enterprise, some legacy Private Branch Exchange (PBX) systems of varying age still exist throughout the agency. The remaining legacy PBXs are generally 15-25 years in age and were manufactured by numerous different vendors. The legacy PBX systems have limitations that impact productivity, efficiency, and operating cost. These systems are either at end of support or end of life status and are being maintained by the FAVES contractor via Operations & Maintenance (O&M), professional services or other task orders. Please describe how you would assume O&M of these remaining legacy PBX systems until such time that they can be replaced and migrated to the FAVES enterprise.
6. Industry Feedback
Interested parties are invited to provide feedback on this announcement and the FAAbs FAVES requirement. Firms responding to this announcement must demonstrate specifically how they would propose to meet the FAAbs administrative voice Enterprise implementation requirements within the constraints listed above.
Responses to this announcement must be in writing and limited to 15 pages and must be submitted via e-mail to the Contracting Officer, Glenn A. Wilson, at glenn.A.wilson@faa.gov by the 4:00 pm (local) on November 22, 2019.
Any documents or files submitted must be compatible with MS Office 365 or Adobe Acrobat PDF format. No other form of submission will be accepted. Any company proprietary information submitted must be clearly marked as such. Any information submitted in response to this announcement will not be returned.
Written questions related to this announcement must be submitted via email to the Contracting Officer listed above by November 6, 2019. No telephonic inquiries will be accepted.
Attachment: FAVES Statement of Work (SOW)
(End of Announcement)
If you're viewing this announcement from a source other than Federal Aviation Administration Contract Opportunities (FAACO), visit https://faaco.faa.gov/index.cfm/announcement/view/34971 to view the original announcement.
Glenn Wilson, glenn.a.wilson@faa.gov, Phone: 202-267-4382
Click here to email Glenn Wilson
