USACE issues Amendment No. 5 To The Army Task Force RFP

The U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center (USACE) recently issued its fifth amendment (Amendment No. 5) to the request for proposals (RFP) for the Army Energy Initiatives Task Force Multiple Award Task Order Contract (MATOC) solicitation. USACE also responded to some of the questions regarding the RFP, via postings on ProjNet.

NOTE: The deadline for submission of proposals remains 2 p.m. Central time, October 5, 2012.

Many of the changes are non-substantive, however, not necessarily unimportant. We suggest that Amendment No. 5 and the accompanying responses to the ProjNet questions be reviewed carefully. For example, the changes include: (i) the number of representative project descriptions that should be submitted for each technology under the evaluation factors, (ii) reference requirements, (iii) page limitations for various sections of a proposal, and (iv) delivery instructions.

Key points to note are:

Pricing

At the Huntsville pre-proposal conference, USACE representatives stated that they would review the RFP's pricing terms after several questions were posed regarding how bidders should calculate the maximum unit price per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to be included in a proposal. In Amendment No. 5, USACE issued the following clarifications:

Pricing information must be set out in the spreadsheet format provided in Section J, Attachment A (not in the CLINs as originally proposed) on a technology-specific basis (a separate spreadsheet for each technology). An offeror must include the percentage of its price per kWh that is based on construction, operation and maintenance, versus the percentage attributable to financing costs. The maximum unit price should include all direct costs, indirect costs, overhead, G&A, and profit, and the offeror should assume that NO tax incentives, renewable energy credits (RECs), or other financial incentives for renewable energy are available (nor should it include ancillary or incidental costs such as land-use fees, grid interconnection fees, or other costs not directly related to the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of a facility). The maximum unit price per kWh should be based on an assumed location of the offeror's choice. The spreadsheet will make a regional adjustment to the unit price per kWh for all of the other possible task order locations using PAX Newsletter DoD Area Cost Factors to adjust construction costs. The use of these indexes for regional price adjustment will...