7A--Renewal of PerfectIT Software Licenses and Support

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) intends to negotiate and award a non-competitive purchase order to Intelligent Editing Limited, Flat 7, 12 Woodchurch Road, London, NW6 3PN, United Kingdom to purchase PerfectIt software licenses and support. The anticipated period of performance is 10/01/2024 to 09/30/2025. This brand name procurement for PerfectIt software will allow the NRC to expand the use of a powerful proofreading software add-in for MS Word that identifies hard to find errors in documents, lack of spelled out acronyms, inconsistent word spelling (email, e-mail/Government, government), and other document quality issues. It significantly reduces the amount of time authors spend proofreading and allows them to focus on their message. It is particularly useful when conforming to the NRC Editorial Style, working on long documents/correspondence, documents with multiple authors, or reusing material from other documents/sources.

This software has been integrated with the NRC’s existing NRC workstation image which is integrated with many different standard image applications such as the agency’s document management application (ADAMS). This software provides the NRC the ability to proactively build out style guides to provide the agency with consistent and reliable correspondence. Although there are other grammar and proofreading products available, PerfectIt is workstation based (no cloud security implications), provides objective consistency checking and NRC and Legal style sheet customization. Based on a search of available tools, no other tools offer this specific combination of needed features.

This brand name procurement of PerfectIt software will allow the NRC to continue providing enhanced proofreading capabilities across the agency. PerfectIt software has also been tested, secured and is an integral part of the NRC’s current enterprise architecture and technical reference model. Standards for the NRC’s software toolsets are established and maintained for several years to maximize the return on those investments and to minimize disruption to NRC’s operations.

Even if other COTS software could meet the NRC’s requirements, the NRC does not currently intend to replace its investment in the PerfectIt software. To do so would cause the NRC to incur significant additional cost and would be highly disruptive. A new software could require the NRC to perform extensive development not only with the new software, but also with standard desktop and other software already in the environment to ensure the proper integration with all of NRC’s tools. The authority for this acquisition is FAR 13.106-1(b), which permits soliciting from a single source if the contracting officer determines that the circumstances of the contract action deem only one source is reasonably available.