Notification of Intent to Issue a One Year Non Competitive Extension

As a follow on to the Sudan Propety Rights Program (SPRP) that ended in October 2010, and in anticipation that the draft Land Policy would be approved, USAID designed and awarded the Sudan Rural Land Governance (SRLG) project in February 2011. The purpose of the SRLG project was to help define and implement laws and regulations related to land tenure and property rights, and institutions that guide the administration and management of land tenure and property rights. The SRLG project has been supporting the development of a sound land tenure system by: (i) providing technical assistance to the Southern Sudan Land Commission to refine the Land Act 2009 and coordinate it with other related legislation supporting land tenure and property rights (which cannot occur until the Land Policy is passed by the parliament), (ii) supporting the state- level by providing technical assistance in two pilot States (Western Equatoria and Jonglei) to define state-level rules governing land use planning, land administration and adjudication, (iii) piloting establishment of one pilot County Land Authority within each of these two States, and (iv) building capacity of State- and County-level land authorities through site specific actions to secure land tenure and improve land use planning in each of the two counties. AIDAR 706.302-70(b)(5) stipulates that competition need not be obtained for an "award for the continued provision of highly specialized services when award to another resource would result in substantial additional costs to the government or would result in unacceptable delays." As the current SRLG activity is due to expire in February 2014, a one year activity is required to prevent an interruption in critical land tenure reform activities until procurement of the long term activity can be completed in late 2014 and an evaluation can be completed assessing the effectiveness of the exisitng activity in 2014 whicch will inform on the new long term activity. Based on the current experiences and the field work so far accomplished by Tetra Tech ARD in providing technical advice on the Land Policy and conducting the land use planning in Jonglei and land inventory in Yambio, and the time that will take to carryout a full and open competition for a one year award, the Mission proposes to extend the Tetra Tech ARD contract for a further one year and increase funding by approximately $1.5 million. If a new contract is awarded instead of the requested extension, the new implementer would require substantial additional costs for mobilization, start up, assessment and/or feasibility study, the requirement of building new relationships/partners across South Sudan, recruitment of new, untrained staff, office and accommodation acquisition. These costs would be duplicated by demobilization of the current contractor. Issuing a one year cost extension to Tetra Tech ARD, which has the local experienced staff and is willing to complete the land tenure activities to prevent an interruption to land tenure reform will allow the Mission to save significant resources and avoid unacceptable delays, while maintaining the current momentum in the project. The fact that trained local staff will be relied upon in lieu of international experts for the one year extension is laudable. If a new contractor would be procured just to complete these finishing activities, the new implementer would likely rely on international experts, since the local staff cultivated by SRLG familiar with the activities would likely have transitioned to other projects.