Southern Expansion of Arlington National Cemetery (ANCSE) Phase III Cemetery Expansion

                                                              PRESOLICITATION NOTICE

W9123625R2000: ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY SOUTHERN EXPANSION PHASE III – CEMETERY EXPANSION LOCATED IN ARLINGTON, VA.

This is a Pre-Solicitation notice. This is NOT a Solicitation. Do NOT submit proposals or questions in response to this notice. 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—Norfolk District intends to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the Construction of the Arlington Nation Cemetery Southern Expansion (ANCSE) Phase III –Cemetery Expansion.   This procurement will be conducted in accordance with FAR Part 15 – Contracting by Negotiation.

The requirement will be solicited as unrestricted full and open competition. It will be solicited as a Design-Bid-Build (DBB) project utilizing the Best Value, Trade-Off Continuum (BVTO) Source Selection evaluation approach in accordance with FAR 15.101. The applicable NAICS code is 237990 – Other Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction with a Small Business Size Standard of $45M. The Government intends to award one Firm-Fixed-Price (FFP) contract.

In accordance with DFARS 236.204 - Disclosure of the Magnitude of Construction Projects, the Magnitude of Construction is between $100M and $250M.

1. PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The Southern Expansion program consists of three discrete adjacent construction projects: 1) Phase I Defense Access Road (DAR) 2) Phase II Operations Complex and 3) Phase III Cemetery Expansion. For the purpose of this solicitation, only the Phase III Cemetery Expansion project is to be considered. Construction of the Phase I DAR and Phase II projects are underway. Phase I, DAR project, is realigning roadways and utilities and performing mass grading on the sites. The acquisition is led by U.S. Department of Transportation: Federal Highway Administration – Eastern Federal Lands Highway Division. Phase II is construction the operations complex and supporting infrastructure to connect the operations complex to the cemetery.  Phase II project is administrated by Norfolk District.  

A brief description of work as part of the Phase III solicitation is as follows:  

1. The expansion of Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) Southern Expansion is approximately 60-acre expansion of ANC, includes interment space and the Phase II operations complex. The cemetery expansion is primarily horizontal construction to increase burial space at ANC by extending the south side of the grounds by nearly 50 acres. ANCSE will create approximately 80,000 additional interments, including above ground cremated, in-ground cremated, in-ground traditional casketed, and in-ground crypts. A network of roadways, sidewalks, and pedestrian walkways will be constructed and tied into the existing system at ANC as well. 
2. Construction of buildings to include a visitor screening facility, public restrooms, and an open-air committal shelter.  
3. In order to maintain unity and status as a Level III Arboretum, extensive landscaping and horticulture plating is required.   
4. The existing Air Force Memorial will be integrated with ANC, with construction primarily occurring within the driveway and north of the existing service building. The Air Force Memorial is an existing structure within the construction zone that requires some component of demolition of construction to merge the western and a portion of the northern memorial boundary.  Phase III, the Cemetery Expansion, constructs the expansion of the cemetery at Arlington National Cemetery and the focus of this Pre-Solicitation Notice.

Construction of the Phase II project is occurring in close proximity to the Phase III project boundaries. Coordination with the adjacent Phase II contractor will be necessary. Construction will need to be sequenced strategically. 

THE ANTICIPATED SOLICITATION DATE IS ON OR ABOUT 20 DECEMBER 2024. THE ANTICIPATED CONTRACT AWARD IS DECEMBER 2025. THE ANTICIPATED CONSTRUCTION DURATION IS 1,004 CALENDAR DAYS FROM NOTICE TO PROCEED.

In accordance with FAR Clause 52.228-1—Bid Guarantee, the awardee will be required to submit a Bid Guarantee that’s 20% or $3,000,000 of the bid price, whichever is less. In accordance with FAR Clause 52.228-15 (Dev), the awardee will be required to submit 100% Performance and Payment bonds within ten (10) calendar days from contract award.

2. EVALUATION FACTORS

The Government intends to award a FFP contract to the responsible offeror whose proposal conforms to

the terms of the RFP notice, is determined fair and reasonable, and offers the best overall value to the Government as determined through a BVTO, Source Selection Evaluation Approach. The Government reserves the right to accept other than the lowest priced or the highest rated non-price offer or to reject all offers. The Government will not award a contract to an Offeror whose proposal contains a deficiency, as defined in FAR 15.001, unless corrected through discussions, should the Government decide to conduct discussions. The Contracting Officer anticipates that the Solicitation will include the following evaluation factors:

Non-Price Factors

Factor 1 – Past Performance

Factor 2 – Project Approach

Factor 3 – Small Business Participation Plan

Factor 4 – Price

It is anticipated that the relative order of importance of evaluation factors is non-price Factors 1 and 2 are of equal importance to each other and each is more important than Factor 3. All non-price factors (1, 2, and 3) when combined will be approximately equal to price. However, the importance of price will increase if the offerors’ non-price proposals are considered essentially equal in terms of overall quality, or if price is so high as to significantly diminish the value of a non-price proposal's superiority to the Government.

The solicitation will be issued via a bifurcated approach and amended to incorporate the following elements:

1. Sub-Phasing: A draft phasing package and preliminary DEQ submission will be included in the initial solicitation. The amendment will include sub-phasing drawings, revisions to specifications, and preliminary DEQ submission documents. 
2. Sheridan Gate:  A preliminary design package will be included in the initial solicitation.  The amendment will include plans and specs to change the design from an external support structure to an internal support structure.   
3. Air Force Memorial Driveway: The final condition for the Air Force Memorial Driveway will be amended into the solicitation.  

The government will initially request responses to Factors 1 and 2. When the amended design package becomes available (approximately February 2025 and March 2025), the solicitation will be amended to include the completed design documents and the offerors will be provided a revised proposal due date. At this time, responses to Factors 3 and 4 will be requested. The Government will not undertake to compare or conduct a selection decision until after all factors have been evaluated. Offerors are cautioned that the design and construction requirements may continue to evolve, particularly in this case, until all Ready To Advertise (RTA) complete construction documents are released by amendment.

In consideration of the final rule amending the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) on 22 December 2023, to implement Executive Order 14063, use of Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) on Federal Construction Projects mandated the use of PLAs where the total estimated cost of the construction contract is expected to be $35M or more. “Offerors shall submit an offer subject to Project Labor Agreement (PLA) requirements in accordance with FAR 22.504, General requirements for project labor agreements.  Any PLA reached pursuant to the PLA requirements in the solicitation does not change the terms of the contract or provide for any price adjustment by the Government.”

3. GOVERNMENT POINT OF ENTRY (GPE)

The RFP and accompanying documents will be issued electronically and will be uploaded to the Solicitation Module of the Procurement Integrated Enterprise Environment (PIEE) website at https://piee.eb.mil/ on or about

December 20,2024 and will be automatically posted to SAM.gov. This solicitation is attempted to have three planned amendments, as a result, the anticipated solicitation period is between December 20,2024 to September 4, 2025. Telephone calls or written requests for the RFP package will NOT be accepted. Prospective offerors are responsible for monitoring SAM.gov to respond to the solicitation and any amendments or other information regarding this acquisition. Prospective Offerors are required to be registered in PIEE and SAM when submitting an offer. The Offeror shall continue to be registered in SAM.gov at time of award, during performance, and through final payment of any contract.

PIEE Resources:

Training material and guides for registering and submitting proposals can be found below and is provided to assist in locating the full scope of resources available on the PIEE website:

1.    PIEE Solicitation Module Vendor Access Instructions: https://dodprocurementtoolbox.com/cms/sites/default/files/resources/2021-08/PIEE%20Solicitation%20Module%20Vendor%20Access%20Instructions_0.pdf

2.    For instructions on how to post an offer, please refer to the Posting Offer demo: https://pieetraining.eb.mil/wbt/sol/Posting_Offer.pdf.

3.    Additional training and PIEE Solicitation Module resources can be found on the PIEE website at:   https://pieetraining.eb.mil/wbt/xhtml/wbt/sol/solicitation/proposals.xhtml.

There are two vendor roles (Proposal Manager and Proposal View Only) for the PIEE Solicitation Module. The Proposal Manager role is required to submit an offer to a solicitation posted in the PIEE Solicitation Module.  Additionally, please be advised that when using the PIEE Solicitation Module, the user’s e-mail address in PIEE must match the e-mail address on file in SAM.gov. For all technical issues or general questions on PIEE Solicitation Module, offerors are advised to contract the PIEE Helpdesk at 866-618-5988 or through their website at https://piee.eb.mil/xhtml/unauth/web/homepage/governmentCustomerSupport.xhtml.