Cornerstone Initiative CS-19-1602 - National Industrial Base Workforce Imperative

U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command - Chemical Biological Center (CCDC CBC), Rock Island, IL, on behalf of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Policy via its Manufacturing Resiliency and Assurance Office, and Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment Program (10 U.S.C. - 2508), in conjunction with Army Contracting Command - Rock Island (ACC-RI), manages the Cornerstone Other Transaction Agreement (OTA), in accordance with 10 U.S.C. - 2371b. Cornerstone was architected to create a broad-based, flexible and enduring public-private consortium focused on strategic strengthening of the U.S. Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and provides a strong complement to the mandates in Presidential Executive Order 13806. ACC-RI, on behalf of the Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) Program, intends to issue a competitive Cornerstone Initiative Request (CIR) for National Industrial Base Workforce Imperative, on or after 21 June 2019, with an estimated closing date of 10 days after issuance. The CIR for National Industrial Base Workforce Imperative will be restricted to Cornerstone consortium members. The CIR will solicit enhanced whitepapers for one or more firm-fixed-price (FFP) prototype OTAs with incremental payments made upon completion of specific milestones. The general intent is "multi-award, multi-phased for multi-years" in incremental prototyping tasks via public-private partnerships (P3). The government reserves the right to award OTA(s) to the best interest of the government, to include re-competing the requirement if needed. The Base Period of performance will be five (5) years with options up to an additional five (5) years. Upon successful prototype completion, a follow-on production contract may be awarded. The Interagency Task Force report responding to Executive Order 13806, dated October 2018, highlighted the criticality of the workforce to the defense industrial base, and that as a cross-cutting industrial base risk area, its shortfalls negatively impact every industrial base technical sector. The DoD needs greater access to innovative and scalable means to recruit, educate, train, and retain trade skill professionals to enable the nation to prevail in the emerging strategic peer military and economic competition described in the 2018 National Defense Strategy. Mission of the National Industrial Base Workforce Imperative is to improve the trade skills of current and future American workers, which must be a national imperative. Decisive, whole-of-nation action is required to achieve the velocity and scale needed to educate and train the next generation of workers in the trade skills required to meet both national security and economic requirements. To achieve the goals of the mission statement, the Nation must send a clear and unmistakable message to the next generation of American workers and to competitor nations. The message is the US truly values and needs top-quality trade skill professionals. The most effective way to execute the mission statement is through unrelenting bold action, rapid planning, flexible processes, and metrics driven leadership. The DoD is seeking scalable public-private partnership models for targeted workforce core competencies and trade skills that can operate within a National framework, leverage regional and State economic factors, and effectively function within their local communities. The program shall utilize DoD trade skill requirements across all technical sectors and identify shortfalls as the initial focal point to develop the prototype models and generate the necessary National-level awareness, momentum, velocity and sustainability required. The desired end-state shall corresponde to the IBAS model and achieve the following lines of effort; to "1) identify effective models and sources of trade skills at the local, state and national level, 2) identify and leverage trustworthy sources of capital, resources, and funding that shall expand and sustain the model(s), and 3) bring together the right leadership, authorities and structure in a public-private partnership framework to achieve the scale and velocity of high quality trade skills required for National Security and commercial economic resiliency and growth of the U.S. industrial base. The CIR for National Imperative will be communicated to the Cornerstone consortium and companies with pending applications via email. Interested organizations are required to have begun the membership process for their proposal to be reviewed. Entities must be members of the Cornerstone consortium, with a signed Cornerstone Consortium Management Agreement, to be awarded this OTA task. Contractors may obtain Cornerstone registration information by visiting the Cornerstone website: http://ibasp-public.ria.army.mil/cornerstone/ Interested parties should stay alert for any changes that may be published to this FBO posting. Please email all questions and responses to the following mailbox: contact@example.gov This Special Notice is for planning purposes only and does not constitute a CIR or an obligation on behalf of the U.S. Government. Issuance of this Special Notice is not a guarantee of a future CIR or an award and is not a commitment of any kind by the Government.