Sensus Water Meters Sole Source Justification

Yellowstone National Park is annoucing it's intent to award a Sole Source Award to Western Industrial Supplies DBA Dana Kepner Company, INC. Any vendor wanting to comment on the rationale for the sole source award shall email Andrea_Hannon@nps.gov no later than 5:00 PM Mountain TIme Tuesday August 7, 2012. 1. Nature and/or description of the item/service being procured and its intended use: Provide 3 - 6" Sensus C2 Water Meters and 1 - 8" Sensus T2 Meter that can be remotely read using handheld device, and that will provide accurate reading at low flow rates. Estimated costs $19,000. 2. Sole Source Justification rationale (Check one and explain below): ___X___ Only one responsible source. ______ Urgent and compelling circumstances exist. Include critical delivery or performance dates, and when you became aware of the requirement. Provide a specific statement of the impact on Government operations, financial or otherwise, if the required delivery or performance dates are not met. Yellowstone has proprietary software and remote reading devices that work only with Sensus water meters. Besides the technological advantages, the prohibitive cost of utilizing any number of systems and software supports the purchase of this equipment. The Sensus water meter regional authorized sales representative for this region is Dana Kepner Company. We can only buy these meters from them. 3. Market Research. Please explain the results or why one was not performed: To replace this auto reading system would be approximately $60,000 - $100,000 and we would have to change all the other existing water meters (242) which would be approximately another $200,000. The expense of this would not be cost effective for the use of government funds. This system is all interconnected. No other system will work without replacing the whole system.