Purchase of Span units

Trade Agreement: NONE
Tendering Procedures: Generally only one firm has been invited to bid
Non-Competitive Procurement Strategy: Exclusive Rights
Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement: No
Vendor Name and Address:
NovAtel Inc.
10921 14th Street N.E.
Calgary Alberta
Canada
T3K2L5
Nature of Requirements:

Advance Contract Award Notice (ACAN).
An ACAN is a public notice indicating to the supplier community that a department or agency intends to award a contract for goods, services or construction to a pre-identified supplier, thereby allowing other suppliers to signal their interest in bidding, by submitting a statement of capabilities. If no supplier submits a statement of capabilities that meets the requirements set out in the ACAN, on or before the closing date stated in the ACAN, the contracting officer may then proceed with the award to the pre-identified supplier.

Definition of the requirement.
The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) located in St. Hubert, P. Quebec would like to purchase the two (2) Novatel power pack 7 Span unit for integration into the CSA LEAD Rover and which will meet the performance requirement that is currently being used by CSA.

Criteria for assessment of the Statement of Capabilities (Minimum Essential Requirements.
Any interested supplier must demonstrate by way of a statement of capabilities that its product meets the following requirements:
CSA owns high accuracy navigation grade Inertial Measurement Units (IMU-FSAS from i-MAR), and Novatel span unit is fully compatible with them. Novatel Span unit is able to operate in a GPS free environment which is a critical requirement. Significant effort was spent internally by CSA to integrate the Novatel Span unit within its software custom architecture. Using a different Span unit would cause CSA to not complete the required work by the Lunar Exploration Analogue Deployment (LEAD) project on time and would partly miss objectives of an international development opportunity with the European Space Agency.

Applicability of the trade agreement(s) to the procurement.
This procurement is not subject to the following trade agreement(s):
Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) - Exemption Annex 520 (1) (m).
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) - Exemption Annex 1001.1a.1- Canadian space Agency is exempt as a Government Entity.

Set-aside under the Procurement Strategy for Aboriginal Business.
Not applicable.

Comprehensive Land Claims Agreement(s).
Not applicable.

Justification for the Pre-Identified Supplier.
Novatel is the manufacturer and Canadian distributor of the Novatel Span unit 7.
ln 2010, a Canadian space company responded to an request for proposal and the following contract was awarded: Lunar Exploration Light Rover: 9F028-090318/MTB. This contract was awarded under the Exploration Surface Mobility (ESM) project dealing with the development of rover prototypes for Lunar. The delivered rover included a Guidance, Navigation and Control (GN&C) embedded software along with advanced sensors required by the rover to establish its self-localization. The main components used by the GN&C software were a set of fiber optical gyroscopes composing an lnertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and a Span unit processing board. To support the above-mentioned contract, the company purchased three iMAR IMU-FSAS IMUs and three Novatel Span units that fuse the data from the IMU. ln order to comply with the contract requirements, the company had to request and pay for a custom firmware to be deployed on the Span unit by the manufacturer Novatel. The new firmware allowed the Span unit to operate without any GPS antenna connected to it which was an important requirement.

ln 2014, a R&D contract (9F052-14-0113/MTB) was awarded to a Canadian space company to upgrade the rover’s GN&C software and to test it. Three field testing campaigns clearly demonstrated the robustness and the high performance of the Span unit technology provided by Novatel. The latter technology has been selected as a critical component of the navigation system composing the rover that supports the Lunar Exploration Analogue Deployment (LEAD) CSA project. The Novatel Span unit has been selected for the following reasons:
. high performance and robustness demonstrated under two previous R&D contracts,
. three units were available at CSA,
. direct compatibility with the i-MAR IMU available at CSA,
. capability to operate under a GPS-free environment.

During 2017 and 2018, CSA invested a lot of effort and resources to integrate the Novatel Span unit with the CSA LEAD rover. The nature of the integration was mechanical, electrical, software and network. A custom software has been written by a CSA software engineer and a coop student. The writing of the above-mentioned software took nearly 8 months. This integration of the Span has been completed in July 2018 on time to support a major rover analogue mission that will take place in 2019 with the European Space Agency and for which a dry run will take place April 2019.

CSA recently encountered a failure of one of the Span units (the unit lasted around 8 years). The failed Span unit have been replaced by spares that were available at CSA. CSA has been informed by Novatel that the Span units version 5 that CSA owns are now obsolete as such, Novatel cannot support the product anymore. Moreover, this is now impossible the get replacement parts. Novatel currently sells the Span unit Version 7. The latter version is back compatible meaning that a user of a previous version is able to easily upgrade its unit. LEAD technical team recommended to upgrade its Novatel Span Unit from version 5 to version 7. This would ensure that the LEAD rover navigation system would remain operational for years.

No substitute product will be accepted by CSA for the following reasons:
1. Significant effort has been deployed under two R&D contracts and internally at CSA to characterise the performance of the Novatel Span Unit. Using a similar product from an alternative supplier would generate an excessive work load to characterise the performance. If the different product does not meet the performance requirement, CSA would have to search once again for an alternative supplier. This would be a significant waste of time and money.
2. CSA owns very expensive IMU (from i-MAR), and the Novatel Span Unit is fully compatible with them which might not be the case for a similar product from an alternative supplier.
3. Significant effort has been spent internally at CSA to integrate the Novatel Span unit. Using a product from an alternative supplier would require a lot of integration effort. CSA estimates to several months the time that would be required to integrate a different Span unit. The first tests with the European Space Agency could begin as early as April 2019.

Government Contracts Regulations Exception(s):
The following exception(s) to the Government Contracts Regulations is (are) invoked for this procurement under subsection: subsection 6(d) - "only one person is capable of performing the work".

Exclusions and/or Limited Tendering Reasons.
The following exclusion(s) and/or limited tendering reasons are invoked under the (section of the trade agreement(s) specified):
Non applicable.

Ownership of Intellectual Property.
Not applicable.

Period of the proposed contract or delivery date.
The product must be delivered before March 31, 2019 but preferably by February 2019, if possible.

Cost estimate of the proposed contract.
The estimated value of the contract is 35,000.00 and 39,000.00 $ US funds.

Name and address of the pre-identified supplier:
Novatel Inc
10921-14th Street, NE
Calgary, Alberta
T3K 2L5

Suppliers' right to submit a statement of capabilities:
Suppliers who consider themselves fully qualified and available to provide the goods, services or construction services described in the ACAN may submit a statement of capabilities in writing to the contact person identified in this notice on or before the closing date of this notice. The statement of capabilities must clearly demonstrate how the supplier meets the advertised requirements.

Closing date for a submission of a statement of capabilities.
The closing date and time for accepting statements of capabilities is February 07, 2019 at 2:00 p.m. EST.

Inquiries and submission of statements of capabilities:
Inquiries and statements of capabilities are to be directed to:
Mary Paradis, Acting Supply Specialist
800 rue de la Gauchetière, ouest
Place Bonaventure, South West Portal
7th Floor, Suite 7300, Montreal, P. Quebec
Telephone: 514-702-8173
Facsimile: 514-496-3822
E-mail: m••••••••@•••••.••.ca
Delivery Date: Above-mentioned

You are hereby notified that the government intends to negotiate with one firm only as identified above. Should you have any questions concerning this requirement, contact the contracting officer identified above.

An Advance Contract Award Notice (ACAN) allows departments and agencies to post a notice, for no less than fifteen (15) calendar days, indicating to the supplier community that it intends to award a good, service or construction contract to a pre-identified contractor. If no other supplier submits, on or before the closing date, a Statement of Capabilities that meets the requirements set out in the ACAN, the contracting authority may then proceed with the award. However, should a Statement of Capabilities be found to meet the requirements set out in the ACAN, then the contracting authority will proceed to a full tendering process.

Suppliers who consider themselves fully qualified and available to provide the services/goods described herein, may submit a statement of capabilities in writing to the contact person identified in this Notice on or before the closing date of this Notice. The statement of capabilities must clearly demonstrate how the supplier meets the advertised requirements.

The PWGSC file number, the contracting officer's name and the closing date of the ACAN must appear on the outside of the envelope in block letters or, in the case of a facsimile transmission, on the covering page.

The Crown retains the right to negotiate with suppliers on any procurement.

Documents may be submitted in either official language of Canada.