GovCon Bid and Proposal Insights
GovCon Bid and Proposal Insights
Technical Expertise and Support Services for the FHWA Office of Safety - Department of Transportation – Federal Highway Administration
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is preparing a MA-IDIQ for Technical Expertise and Support Services (Solicitation No: 693JJ326R000004). With an estimated $46M value, partial small business set-aside, and 4 anticipated awards, this pre-solicitation is one to watch.
Key Details:
• Estimated Contract Value: $46 M
• Anticipated Number of Awards: 4
• Estimated RFP Release Date: November 2025
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Welcome to the Deep Dive, your shortcut for getting up to speed on complex policy and technical ecosystems.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and today we're really digging into something critical.
Speaker 1:We are. We're looking at the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Safety, HSA, they call it Specifically the huge contracts, these IDIQs, that actually fuel their work.
Speaker 2:And the stakes. I mean they couldn't be higher for you, for everyone on the road. Really, the mission is super clear Make surface transportation safer for everyone. We're talking drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders, the lot.
Speaker 1:And the need for this is just stark when you look at the numbers. The estimates for 2023 were around 40,990 deaths from road crashes in the US alone.
Speaker 2:It's horrifying that number over 40,030,. It breaks down to someone dying on the road roughly every 15 minutes. Just think about that. It really puts the government's response into perspective, doesn't it Like the scale of what they're trying to do? Absolutely, and you see that scale reflected in the money. We know a prior contract structure the one they're looking to replace now had a potential ceiling of $38 million.
Speaker 1:Wow $38 million yeah. Just for technical support, research policy work.
Speaker 2:Exactly. It's a huge commitment and to manage that kind of spending flexibly they use this IDIQ contract structure indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity.
Speaker 1:Right, which basically lets them issue specific task orders when they need something done, correct.
Speaker 2:That's the idea, which basically lets them issue specific task orders when they need something done correct. That's the idea. It lets them mix different types of orders too, like firm fixed price FFP for when they know exactly what they want delivered.
Speaker 1:Like a final report or a training module.
Speaker 2:Yeah, something to find. The contractor takes the risk to deliver it for that set price. But then they also use time and materials. T&m.
Speaker 1:Okay, and T&M is more for.
Speaker 2:More for when they need expertise over time, like bringing in a specialist engineer or a policy analyst for a year. The exact hours might be hard to pin down up front.
Speaker 1:So it gives them versatility Pay for a defined product or pay for expert time, depending on the need.
Speaker 2:Precisely, it's about having the right tool for the job contract-wise.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's the mechanism, the funding structure. But what about the philosophy behind it all? I mean with those fatality numbers? Clearly the old approach of just saying drive safer wasn't enough.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely not. There's been a fundamental shift. The guiding philosophy now is what FHBA calls the safe system approach, and you really need to grasp this to understand what these contracts are trying to achieve.
Speaker 1:How does it differ from the traditional way of thinking about road safety?
Speaker 2:Well, traditionally, the focus after a crash was almost always on the driver right Human error, Blame the person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sounds familiar.
Speaker 2:The safe system approach flips that. Its starting point is death and serious injuries on our roads. They're unacceptable and they're preventable. It accepts two fundamental truths One, humans make mistakes it's inevitable. And two, humans are vulnerable. Our bodies just aren't built to withstand high speed impacts.
Speaker 1:So if mistakes are going to happen and people are fragile, the system itself needs to be designed to prevent those mistakes from becoming tragedies. Is that it?
Speaker 2:You got it. That's the core idea. Responsibility is shared. It's not just the driver anymore, it's the engineers designing the roads, the companies building the cars, the policymakers setting the speed limits. Everyone plays a part.
Speaker 1:So safety has to be proactive, not reactive.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there needs to be redundancy.
Speaker 2:Redundancy is crucial. Multiple layers of protection, so if one thing fails, maybe the driver is distracted. Another layer, like forgiving road design or vehicle safety features, can prevent a death or serious injury. It demands a systems approach.
Speaker 1:And that systems thinking brings us to the four E's right which these contractors have to support.
Speaker 2:Correct Engineering, education, enforcement and emergency medical services. Ems, the FHWA Office of Safety, is trying to coordinate efforts across all these areas nationwide, so the contractors they hire need expertise that spans that whole range.
Speaker 1:OK, let's dive into how this massive job gets broken down. In the contract documents, sources outline four main task areas. Task one seems to be the core technical work, technical support and assistance. What does that actually involve?
Speaker 2:Task one is really the research and analysis engine. Yes, it includes R&D, engineering, support, the basics, but a big piece is high level policy analysis. What kind of analysis? Really complex stuff Cost benefit analyses, figuring out the likely impacts of new regulations or major safety programs. They're basically modeling the future, you know, trying to predict what happens if we implement a new national standard.
Speaker 1:And the sources mentioned evaluations too. That's about proving whether these interventions actually work.
Speaker 2:I assume, yeah, that's where the scientific rigor comes in. They need robust studies. The documents specifically call out before-after crash studies, which isn't just like counting crashes. It's a detailed statistical analysis comparing safety outcomes before they change something, say redesign, an intersection versus after, Plus field studies on human behavior, human factors. This is where you start seeing the need for social science expertise.
Speaker 1:Okay, so task one generates the data, the proof points. Then task two professional capacity building, development and training. This sounds like getting that knowledge out there.
Speaker 2:Exactly, this is all about tech transfer. It's about educating the current safety workforce, state and local engineers, planners, and also building skills for the future workforce. The contractors are essentially curriculum developers here.
Speaker 1:More than just putting together a PowerPoint deck, I imagine.
Speaker 2:Oh way more. We're talking comprehensive curricula, workshops, detailed training materials, and they often deliver these through partners, big ones like the National Highway Institute, nhi or AAH2. A key thing is making sure it works for adult learners, and they're looking at modern methods, virtual learning, even MOOCs, those massive online open courses. The goal is to take complex findings, maybe from a sophisticated data analysis, and make them teachable, make them usable for practitioners.
Speaker 1:So task one finds out what works. Task two trains people how to do it. Now task three is audience outreach, getting the message to the public right. But the sources highlighted a really surprising constraint here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this one jumped out at me too. It's a huge factor. The FHWA Office of Safety apparently does not currently have a budget for paid advertising.
Speaker 1:Wait seriously. They have potentially $38 million for technical support aimed at stopping 40,000 deaths a year, but they can't buy an ad. No TV spots, no social media boosts, no radio campaigns.
Speaker 2:That's what the source indicates. It's a major constraint. It means every communication effort which the contractor has to develop, plan, implement. The whole package relies entirely on organic reach.
Speaker 1:Wow, so national safety campaigns have to basically go viral or rely on partners to spread the word.
Speaker 2:Pretty much. Success hinges completely on the quality of the content itself and the contractor's skill in using partner networks, social media, algorithms, web platforms, print, whatever they can leverage without paying for placement.
Speaker 1:That sounds incredibly difficult. What kinds of activities fall under this organic outreach umbrella?
Speaker 2:It's full-service communications, things like editorial planning, graphic design, creating content for all sorts of channels, managing websites like the CMF Clearinghouse that's the Crash Modification Factors Clearinghouse and even physical stuff like organizing and staffing exhibit booths at maybe half a dozen major conferences each year. Everything has to be top-notch, designed to be shared, because there's no ad budget to force eyeballs onto it.
Speaker 1:That's a fundamental challenge.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, last one task four operations and administrative program support, keeping the lights on stuff. But even here tech plays a bigger role than you might expect.
Speaker 2:It does. Task 4 covers the essential admin and digital infrastructure Support for building and maintaining SharePoint sites using tools like Power Apps and Power BI, for you know, internal dashboards and data visualization.
Speaker 1:Bitter enough.
Speaker 2:But then it explicitly mentions using emerging programs like large language models, LLMs.
Speaker 1:AI for admin support. How are they using things like ChatGPT in the back office of highway safety?
Speaker 2:Well, the documents suggest it's about boosting efficiency, maybe using LLMs to quickly summarize huge volumes of research papers or helping clean up data sets. But it also specifically links this to supporting Freedom of Information Act requests FOIA.
Speaker 1:Ah, foia, that can mean wading through tons of documents.
Speaker 2:Exactly Thousands of pages, sometimes videos, images. The contractor has to review everything, redact sensitive info. Ai, particularly advanced text and image processing tools, could potentially speed that up dramatically. So it's AI for compliance and transparency, not just you know fancy safety modeling.
Speaker 1:This brings us to maybe the most fascinating part. The kind of expertise needed to pull all this off is not just civil engineers anymore, is it? What skills are they looking for?
Speaker 2:No, definitely not just engineers. It's intensely interdisciplinary, which makes sense given that safe system approach we talked about. You need serious data science chops.
Speaker 1:Like what specifically?
Speaker 2:Sophisticated data gathering, managing huge data sets, advanced statistical modeling. They mentioned specific things like data-driven safety analysis, a DDSA, and needing expertise in the Highway Safety Manual, the HSM, which is full of complex methodologies.
Speaker 1:And dealing with all the different data sources federal state, local crash data, road characteristics, traffic volumes, even hospital entry data. It's a massive integration challenge.
Speaker 2:It is and it goes beyond traditional stats. They explicitly want experience with machine learning, supervised, unsupervised techniques and using LLMs and AI strategically. They're looking for people who can find the hidden patterns in all that messy data.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's the high-tech angle. But then there are these other fields listed Public health, sociology, health equity, things you don't immediately connect with road building.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's maybe the most revolutionary part they need expertise in public health, public policy, injury prevention, community health, health equity, even sociology.
Speaker 1:Why those fields?
Speaker 2:Because they recognize that road safety isn't just an engineering problem. It's a public health crisis. They need people who understand how social factors, community design and equity issues contribute to crash risk and injury severity. How do you integrate those insights into solutions?
Speaker 1:So it's not that engineering is less important, but it needs to be informed by this broader public health and social perspective.
Speaker 2:That's the idea. It's about synthesis. You still absolutely need the engineers who know highway design, pedestrian and bike facilities, traffic laws like the Highway Safety Improvement Program or HSIT. But the public health experts help frame the problem differently. They help identify who's most vulnerable, why they're vulnerable, and ensure the engineered solutions actually address the human and social dimensions, not just. You know the road geometry. The two sides have to work together.
Speaker 1:And to make sure this complex machine runs smoothly, the government specifies certain key personnel roles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they name six specific roles that need government approval A program manager to oversee it all, a principal investigator likely for the research side, an engineer SME subject matter expert for design, a technical specialist for communications, another for policy and a technology transfer specialist for that training piece.
Speaker 1:Covering all the bases.
Speaker 2:Trying to yeah, it shows they need leadership across research, engineering policy, comms and training.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's shift gears slightly to the business side. This big IDIQ contract you mentioned. It's a re-compete. The government is basically hiring for this job again. Do we know who's doing the work now? The incumbents?
Speaker 2:We do. The sources mention the current holders of the HSA IDIQ. They're big names in the transportation consulting world Cambridge Systematics, lados, the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and VHB Vanassa, hang and Breslin.
Speaker 1:Okay, established players.
Speaker 2:Right and that recent sources sought notice, the one from August 2024, that's the government doing market research, seeing who else might be out there, getting feedback, making sure they have a good competitive field for the new contract award.
Speaker 1:Makes sense and with this much money involved in the sensitivity of the safety mission, I assume the government oversight is pretty intense.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely Extremely rigid, which is standard for these large government contracts. There's a clear hierarchy. At the top you have the contracting officer, the CO.
Speaker 1:The CO.
Speaker 2:The CO is the only person with the authority to make changes to the contract Price, terms, scope of work. Anything binding has to go through the CO.
Speaker 1:So they control the money and the rules. Why is that distinction so important?
Speaker 2:It's crucial for control and accountability. It prevents scope creep you know the project's slowly getting bigger without formal approval and it protects taxpayer money. Then you have the CR contracting officer's representative. The COR is the technical expert on the government side. They monitor the contractor's day-to-day work. They inspect the deliverables, they accept the reports or the training materials.
Speaker 1:So the CR handles the, what the CO handles the contract.
Speaker 2:Exactly. The COR can say, yes, this technical report meets the requirements, but they cannot tell the contractor okay, do this extra analysis and we'll pay you more. Only the CEO can authorize changes that affect cost or terms. That separation is key.
Speaker 1:And how does the government track performance over the what is it? Five-year contract life?
Speaker 2:It's a five-year base period, with options potentially extending it up to 66 months. And yes, they track performance very formally using CPAR Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System. It's basically an annual report card. The government formally reviews the contractor on things like the quality of their work did they meet deadlines, did they manage costs effectively and even how well they used small businesses as subcontractors.
Speaker 1:And that CPAR's rating follows the company around it absolutely does.
Speaker 2:A good CPAR's record is critical for winning future government work. A bad one can be disqualifying.
Speaker 1:So, wrapping this up, what really strikes me is how tackling this awful problem 41,000 deaths a year has forced the government to build this incredibly complex support system. It's not just engineers anymore. It's data scientists, ai specialists, public health experts, sociologists, communicators all managed under these tight contracting rules.
Speaker 2:It's fascinating, isn't it? It shows that improving safety today isn't just about physical infrastructure. It requires this constellation of highly specialized expertise integrating tech, social science and policy. So the next time you hear about a new national safety initiative or see a report, don't just picture road crews. Picture the AI expert who crunched the numbers, the public health researcher who identified the underlying risks, the communicator who figured out how to get the message out without an ad budget, all coordinated through this multimillion-dollar federal contract.
Speaker 1:It really underscores that shift we talked about from blaming the driver to fixing the system. Safety is now about systems thinking, data integration and understanding human and social vulnerability.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and maybe here's a final thought for you to chew on. We talked about the four E's engineering, education, enforcement, EMS but with the heavy reliance on AI, predictive modeling, data integration are we maybe seeing the quiet emergence of a fifth E, Something like embedded intelligence?
Speaker 1:Making the whole road network smarter, more predictive, maybe even self-correcting.
Speaker 2:Could be where we're heading. Something to think about next time you're out on the road.
Speaker 1:Definitely something to think about. Thanks for joining us for the Deep Dive.