Meteor Burst Maintenance and Repair Services

NOTICE OF INTENT The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), intends to issue a firm-fixed price, sole source purchase order to Maiden Rock for an maintenance and repair service for Meteor Burst radio equipment and technical support for remote radios and master station equipment. This procurement is being conducted under Simplified Acquisition Procedures in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), Part 6.302-1 (a) (2) (ii) (A), Only One Responsible Source and no other Supplies will Satisfy Agency Requirements. Currently the National Water and Climate Center (NWCC) is being required to vacate the frequencies the remote field sites and master stations operate on and switch to frequencies dedicated to the USDA-NRCS. This required all 545B field radios to undergo a substantial upgrade to move to new frequencies. There are 50 remaining 545B radios to be repaired to meet NRCS specifications. In addition to the frequency changes we require repair work on the equipment at 5 master stations including 6 exciters and software modification to existing equipment. Estimated value of services is $51,000. The SNOTEL system is the largest meteor burst remote data collection system in the world. Meteorburst transmitters are the primary source for transmitted SNOTEL and SCAN data used in essential engineering research and development projects with field applications throughout the USDA-NRCS. The 520X radio and all connecting power and communication cables transmit data collected from Soil Climate Analysis stations and SNOTEL stations across the United States. All remote station radios operate against this proprietary operating system and were manufactured by MCC who has transferred the rights to Maiden Rock. To compete this award would create substantial duplication of costs in which the Government is not expected to recover. This is not a request for Competitive Proposals. No contract will be awarded on the basis of offers received in response to this notice. A determination by the Government not to compete the proposed effort on a full and open competition basis, based upon the responses to this notice, is solely within the discretion of the Government. Oral communications are not acceptable in response to this notice. This is a notice and a solicitation will not be issued. NRCS will not respond to requests for solicitation copies and will not pay for information received in response to this announcement. No solicitation document is available. The associated North America Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code is 811213 and the Business Size Standard is 500 employees. The point of contact for this requirement is Willie Mae Johnson, Supervisory Contract Specialist, email contact@example.gov.