Infrastructure Research Engineering Services and Data Management

Sources Sought 693JJ3-19-SS-0008 Title: Infrastructure Research Engineering Services and Data Management Contract Section 1. Submittal Information Submit responses electronically to: Matthew Gilliard at matthew.gilliard@dot.gov Email Subject Line must include: - Infrastructure Research Engineering Services and Data Management Contract Section 2. Introduction SOURCES SOUGHT: THIS IS ONLY A MARKET SURVEY FOR WRITTEN INFORMATION. THIS IS NEITHER A REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS NOR AN ANNOUNCEMENT OF A FORTHCOMING SOLICITATION. Information received will be considered solely for the purpose of identifying potential interest and capability for providing non- personal technical support to the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA's) Office of Infrastructure Research and Development (HRDI) at the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center (TFHRC) in McLean, Virginia, in validating, managing, analyzing and visualizing infrastructure research data sets. Engineering services, data processing and management, and data visualization and analytics are needed to ensure data quality and public access of the infrastructure related data. The success of this effort requires a team that possesses expertise in not only data management and web application development, but also pavement, bridge, and other highway infrastructure engineering. FHWA seeks information from entities with demonstrated past performance, current relevant experience, personnel, equipment, and technical qualification to provide capability statements in the areas listed for consideration in developing future FHWA requirements. The research area and data include the following: - Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) program and related Data - Long-Term Bridge Performance (LTBP) program and related Data - Other Highway Infrastructure Research Data Overview of LTPP Program and Related Data Started in 1987 as part of the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP) and managed by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) since 1992, the Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) program studies the performance of in-service pavements. The primary goal of the LTPP program is to understand how and why pavements perform as they do. The mission of the Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) Program is to promote increased pavement life through: - Collecting and storing performance data from a large number of in-service highways in the United States and Canada, over an extended period, to support analysis and product development. - Analyzing the data to describe how pavements perform and to explain why they perform as they do. - Translating these insights into knowledge and usable engineering products related to pavement design, construction, rehabilitation, maintenance, preservation, and management. As highway agencies transition to a performance-based approach to managing highway investments, the LTPP program is more important than ever. Since 1989, the LTPP database has grown exponentially and has included a collection of electronic information from over 2,500 pavement test sections throughout the United States and Canada. The LTPP program has two sets of experiments, the General Pavement Studies (GPS) and the Specific Pavement Studies (SPS). The GPS test sections were established on existing pavements. An experimental matrix was used to guide the selection of GPS test sections that would cover, to the greatest extent possible, the range of factors required to explain pavement performance. Test sections for SPS experiments were built to specific designs and thicknesses, as defined in the experimental plans. Huge amount of pavement performance related data have been collected using standard data collection procedures and protocols on a variety of pavement types. This information is stored in an Information Management System (IMS) and has been available to researchers since the early nineties with new data and data elements added every year. It is the world's largest pavement performance database. Researchers and engineers in the federal government, state highway departments, industry associations, consulting firms, international community and universities are and will use the LTPP database in research, development, and design projects for decades to come. Since 2014 LTPP data and relevant knowledge has been disseminated and visualized through the LTPP InfoPave web portal (https://infopave.fhwa.dot.gov/ ). LTPP InfoPave is the gateway to the LTPP data and knowledge, and have been used by thousands of pavement engineers and researchers worldwide to advance the science of pavement engineering. For more information about LTPP program, please visit https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/research/tfhrc/programs/infrastructure/pavements/ltpp/ . Overview of LTBP Program and Related Data The Long-Term Bridge Performance (LTBP) program was congressionally mandated under the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). In 2008 FHWA initiated the LTBP Program, which is anticipated to be a multi-decade research effort. The overall objective of the LTBP Program is to periodically monitor representative samples of bridges nationwide to collect, document, maintain, and manage research-quality performance data over an extended time horizon. This is accomplished by taking advantage of advanced nondestructive evaluation (NDE) and structural health monitoring (SHM) technologies in addition to traditional visual bridge inspection approaches. The LTBP Program is designed in part to collect critical performance data that are not available elsewhere and merge it with data gathered from other sources. The LTBP program has a comparable goal as the LTPP program in that the data is gathered to improve understanding of bridge performance to enable data-driven decisions. Similarly, the LTBP IMS stores and manages data collected by the LTBP program, as well as data collected from other sources. An example is National Bridge Inventory (NBI) data. Launched in January 2019, the LTBP InfoBridge web portal, https://infobridge.fhwa.dot.gov/, is a centralized, national repository of bridge performance data and related analysis tools. It provides storage, retrieval, dissemination, analysis, and visualization of data collected through LTBP program efforts, as well as data sets collected through other research studies, and provides users with the ability to holistically assess bridge performance on an individual project or network basis. For more information, please visit the LTBP web-site at http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/research/tfhrc/programs/infrastructure/structures/ltbp/. LTPP and LTBP Data Management and Web Portals The FHWA Long-Term Infrastructure Performance (LTIP) team manages both LTPP and LTBP programs and is combining similar areas to make both programs run more efficiently and effectively. Data resulting from both programs are now co-located in Amazon AWA cloud. Many data elements, such as climatic factors are common to both programs. The process of collecting field data, Quality Control/Quality Assurance, and storing data into a structured database is essentially the same for both programs. There are also many similarities and synergies to be gained by implementing similar platforms for both IMS structures and how the data and knowledge should be made available to the public through InfoPave and InfoBridge. InfoPave and InfoBridge Configuration and Development Platform Introduction Both InfoPave and InfoBridge are hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud technologies, consisting of development and production environments. These environments include a number of servers such as web server, Oracle RDS server, MS SQL database server, and application server. Example software technology used includes Oracle 12c, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft ASP.NET MVC (C#), Microsoft Windows IIS web server. In addition, several other cloud technologies such as Amazon S3 and Amazon SES, etc. were used to support the required application features. In terms of client-side technologies, InfoPave uses several client-side technologies that include basic jQuery library as well as MVVM frameworks such as Knockout. Additionally, it also uses Bootstrap for the user interface development. The client-side of the LTBP InfoBridge application has been developed using the latest UI/UX technologies such as HTML, CSS, HTML 5, and Bootstrap 4. The client-side development was done using the latest MVVM frameworks such as AngularJS and Knockout that allow two-way binding of the data elements being exchanged between the web server and the client browser. Additionally, advanced WebGL techniques were also used on the client side to enhance and optimize the application performance for rendering huge amounts of data points on Google Maps. Section 3. Scope of Activities The scope of a potential contract would encompass civil engineers (pavement and bridge engineers in particular), researchers, database engineers, data analysts, computer programmers, technical writers, and other personnel required to fulfill the following objectives. The general task areas from which the Government will issue task orders under this contract are as follows: Task A: Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) Data Task B: Long-Term Bridge Performance (LTBP) Data Task C: Other Highway Infrastructure Research Data Tasks/Activities For each task area, some or all of the following activities may be required: - Validate collected and computed highway infrastructure research data. Data sets to be validated, at a minimum, shall include: o In-situ performance monitoring data collected by non-destructive testing equipment (e.g.: RABIT bridge deck assessment, pavement roughness measuring vehicles, weigh-in-motion systems, falling-weight deflectometers, automated longitudinal and transverse profile measurements), o Manually collected infrastructure performance field data (e.g. pavement surface distresses, bridge condition visual inspections), o Laboratory test results, and o Data submitted by the state DOTs or made available through other relevant research programs. - Process and develop appropriate information management systems consisting of highly technical databases, data warehouse, metadata, etc. - Periodically, update validated research data sets on LTPP InfoPave, LTBP InfoBridge, PRDS, and other web portals as appropriate. - Develop visualization techniques that enable engineers and research scientists to readily understand and make use of the vast amount of infrastructure research data that is generated by HRDI and other research entities. - Enhance, maintain, and provide technical support to LTPP InfoPave, LTBP InfoBridge, and other infrastructure research data related web applications as appropriate. Section 4. Instructions for Submission FHWA encourages any organization that believes it has the ability to work collaboratively with the FHWA and with other institutions on the Infrastructure Research Engineering Services and Data Management Contract, to identify its interests and capabilities by submitting the information listed below to the email address listed in Section 1 above. a) Organization name and address, and contact information (name, title, email, and telephone number of the point of contact). b) A brief description of type of business or organization. c) A summary description of the organization's motivation and why the business is best suited to provide the requested services and activities, as described in Section 3. d) A summary description of relevant technical expertise, capabilities, and facilities the organization would be willing to share or provide with regard to non-personal technical support services to support task areas and activities as described in both Sections 2 and 3 of this request. e) A summary of the organization's planned teaming arrangements and management plan. This effort requires several distinct sets of expertise: 1) pavement and bridge engineering, especially LTPP and LTBP programs, 2) data processing, validation, and management, including LTPP and LTBP data sets, and 3) computer hardware, cloud computing and security, software and web based software development. A successful Offeror would assemble a team of highly qualified and innovative cross-discipline team with in-depth knowledge and significant experience in all the task areas and activities identified in Section 3 Scope of Activities of this document. In particular, the assembled team should have staff with in-depth knowledge or experiences in: - Pavement design and analysis, maintenance and rehabilitation, pavement performance monitoring, field data collection, materials testing, traffic loading characteristics, environmental effects on pavements, etc. LTPP program objectives, experiments, data collection requirements and protocols, LTPP database design and operations, QC programs and management; - Bridge design, performance monitoring and data processing and management. This includes visual inspection, non-destructive testing, and other types of bridge performance monitoring data. LTBP program goals, data collection requirements and protocols, and data; - Web application development, maintenance and support, including cloud hosting technologies, database management, data visualization and web user interface (infrastructure, application, data warehouse, etc); - LTPP InfoPave and LTBP InfoBridge web applications. NOTE: Email attachments should be submitted in Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF formats and should not exceed ten (10) pages in length. Do not submit marketing materials, slide presentations, or technical papers. The FHWA is seeking the level of interest in providing personnel, engineering, and technical services necessary to support research activities of the LTIP program. This is neither a Request for Proposals nor an announcement of a forthcoming solicitation. Information received will be considered solely for the purpose of identifying potential interest and qualifications for the identified potential contract. After reviewing the responses, the FHWA may: - Contact business or organizations individually to ask for clarifications. - Invite business or organizations to attend or present at a virtual or physical workshop to further define the requirements and capabilities of the program. - Solicit proposals. The FHWA is not obligated to contact any or all respondents, hold meetings with any or all respondents, or solicit proposals as a result of this request. FHWA will not reimburse costs associated with responding to this request and does not intend to pay for the information received. No Contract, Cooperative Agreement or Other Instrument will be awarded as a result of this Request for Information.