N-CATT Request for Quotations: Tech Tool Development

The Community Transportation Association of America (CTAA) is soliciting quotes from consultants in support of the Federal Transit Administration-funded National Center for Applied Transit Technology (N-CATT) in supporting staff to develop and publish a web-based tool to help small transit agencies understand how they might incrementally be able to electrify their fleets. This tool will consider route-level electrification and helping demand-response services determine the number of vehicles they can electrify.

The selected consultant(s) will work closely with N-CATT staff in developing the tool.

Interested consultants should read the attached RFQ and submit quotes in the format outlined under Bid Requirements.

This opportunity is open to all:

• Who are able to receive federal funding and are not excluded or affiliated with an excluded organization from receiving federal dollars;
• American organizations ( E.O. 14005  Made in all America, by all of American’s workers);
• Small and minority business; women owned small business and labor surplus firms.

Any questions should be sent to carpenter@ctaa.org, and will be answered on this page.

Please submit your bid as one PDF document to Andrew Carpenter at carpenter@ctaa.org by 11:59pm Eastern on February 6, 2024.

Read the full RFQ here

Q&A

• Would N-CATT provide the vendor with a short list of routes and towns to build and validate the model. This is required to assess the type of algorithm used to build the route estimate and EV transition recommendation model.
  • No – this will be the vendor’s work.
• Who is the eventual owner of the Intellectual property generated during the project.
  • N-CATT
• What is the approximate budget for the RFQ.
  • Vendors should submit the cost for which they are willing to perform this work.
• Our organization already has a software-as-a-service platform that can provide what N-CATT is requesting be developed as a part of this engagement.  Would detailing the system we already have in place and its advantages be an acceptable alternative to proposing to create something bespoke for N-CATT’s use?
  • Vendors should propose how they can help N-CATT’s audience accomplish the desired outcomes in this RFQ.
• Can N-CATT please clarify how ownership of the tool would work?  Does N-CATT prefer to own the tool outright, and will N-CATT run the analyses on behalf of the participating small-urban, rural, and tribal transit services?  Or is the intention that each participating entity would run their own analysis themselves?
  • N-CATT will own the tool. The goal is for agencies to access this information at no cost to themselves without N-CATT actively walking them through the tool.
• Is N-CATT able to identify (or estimate) the quantity of public transit entities that will participate, and the average fleet size of these participants?  And over what timeframe the participants will be engaged?
  • We want the tool to be open to anybody to use on their schedule. Any one resource typically has a few dozen engagements per month. This tool will be available indefinitely.
• Are you anticipating integration spatial data like what is handled by ArcGIS into the tool?
  • We are open to integrating this tool into the website or linking to the tool via a landing page. We encourage responses to outline what they consider the best option to balance cost and quality.