MISSILE DEFENSE AGENCY CALLS ON SMALL BUSINESSES FOR ADVISORY AND ASSISTANCE SERVICES WORK, Defense News, Jan 25, 2010. Three small businesses, including APT Research of Huntsville, AL, have been awarded advisory and assistance services contracts from the Missile Defense Agency. The APT contract has a ceiling of $209 million to assist the Missile Defense Agency’s Quality, Safety and Mission Assurance Directorate, according to a Jan. 21 Defense Department statement. The contracts were competitively awarded under a small business set-aside request for proposal.

The APT MiDAESS QSMA Team has won the MiDAESS contract!

APT has submitted its proposal for the MiDAESS Contract. We are awaiting announcement of the award.

On April 9, APT hosted a kick-off meeting for the MiDAESS QS&MA team. This meeting represented a milestone in that the team building phase is essentially complete as we await the proposal preparation phase.

Over 35 companies will be offering services in the QS&MA area via the APT Team. This includes 13 companies in the current MDA QS&MA workforce. Over 20 additional companies are included on the team, each with value added in the QS&MA area.

This team building ffort is in direct response to General O’Reilly’s request to offer the best and brightest national capability for an enterprise wide solution. The overall team strategy is to posture this team to be ready and able to be responsive to any work which is made available in the QS&MA area no matter how task orders may be bundled.

Bob Lewis Associates Engineering Analysis, Inc. (EAI)

Teaming Approach

A-P-T Research, Inc. (APT) recognizes a need to offer a variety of talents central to the QS&MA mission for this proposal. Accordingly, APT is taking a “Big Tent” approach and openly invites all incumbent companies and personnel to join APT’s team. APT is in discussions with over 20 companies with recognized capability in the QS&MA areas to form our MiDAESS team.

For this procurement, potential OCI is a major consideration. APT has developed a multi-layered approach that will protect all parties from OCI.

OCI Planning

APT’s OCI Mitigation/Avoidance Plan is among the first to be reviewed by the government contracting team. We hope to obtain feedback within the week and will report the results on this site.

Our planning involves multiple layers. The first layer is to avoid OCI issues at the prime contractor level. Also called the “Washington Post” test, this test can be conducted by examination of the business base of the company. If a company builds, designs, operates or is working as a part of the system development contractors team, wherein it might evaluate its own work, it has a possible OCI. If a company’s business base is such that a MiDAESS win might make it susceptible to purchase by a larger company, it has a potential OCI. APT’s OCI plan is designed to protect the MDA and its contractors from these accusations or improprieties by assuring that work is only assigned to organizations where no OCIs exist. APT’s plan provides this protection.

A-P-T Research, Inc. is pleased to announce its intent to submit a proposal as the Prime for the Quality, Safety & Mission Assurance function of the MiDAESS contract in support of MDA. APT is an employee-owned small business based in Huntsville, Alabama. APT welcomes the addition of teammates and personnel.

During the last three years, APT has provided MDA support averaging over 22 MYE per year, with support from 59 APT employees. This footprint is larger than any other small business with specialty in QS&MA. This has led to our decision to offer our services as the Prime Contractor on the MiDAESS QS&MA contract.

APT provides a full spectrum of QS&MA services with specific expertise in independent analyses and recommendations in systems engineering, quantitative risk assessment, test planning, range safety, system safety, software system safety, explosives safety, industrial and quality engineering, reliability, software development and modeling, and training.