Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity FEST Redacted

Bureau of Global Public Affairs – Crisis Communications • Bureau of Consular Affairs – Overseas Citizen Services • Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation – Office of WMD Terrorism: Foreign Consequence Management
• Bureau of Medical Services – Operational Medicine
• Department of Health and Human Services – Emergency Management and Medical Operations
• Intelligence Community
• Department of Energy – Nuclear Emergency Support Team • Department of Defense – Geographic Combatant Commands (GCC) and Special Operations Command (SOCOM)
• Federal Bureau of Investigation – Critical Incident Response Group, Counterterrorism Division, and Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate
• Other Department and Interagency Community entities as required by a crisis event or threat.
This procurement will allow the Office of GTC to accomplish its mission to forward-deploy personnel and secure communications equipment to incident sites away from post to ensure rapid, accurate information flow between the incident site and the COM. •

The estimated value is

SECTION 4: IDENTIFICATION OF THE EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

AND THE SUPPORTING RATIONALE

This acquisition is conducted pursuant to 41 U.S.C. 4103 and 4106 as implemented by FAR 16.507-6 and substantiated by the following:
☒ FAR 16.507-7 - Items peculiar to one manufacturer.
There are no manufacturing or competitive sources of PacStar Tactical Smart Chassis for PacStar 400-Series communication, computing and networking modules. PacStar is the only manufacturer whose existing PacStar 400-Series communication, computing and networking modules will fit into and fully interoperate with the PacStar Tactical Smart Chassis. Additionally, there are warranties, service plans and software maintenance agreements that will become void if unauthorized equipment is introduced into the FEST environment. The cost of using another brand of Tactical Smart Chassis would require new hardware procurements ranging in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Additionally, it is important that GTC keeps consistency and homogeneity in the secure mobile environment to reduce operational complexity and risk. Some of the obvious benefits of a homogeneous environment include consistency in emergency communication management. This strategy has been used to re-purpose equipment from under-utilized programs to shore-up capabilities that have the same equipment but require more resources.

PacStar Tactical Smart Chassis for PacStar 400-Series communication, computing and