Artificial Intelligence Geotechnical Borehole Logging Tool

This Sources Sought Notice is for Market Research ONLY to determine the availability, capability and interest of small business firms for a potential small business category type set-aside. 

NO AWARD will be made from this Sources Sought Notice. 

NO SOLICITATION, SPECIFICATIONS, OR DRAWINGS ARE AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME as this is solely for Market Research. Please do not request such documentation.  Requests for any of this information will go unanswered. 

If the conditions at FAR 19.502-2(b) are met the contracting officer is required to set the acquisition aside for small business concerns. Interested contractors who have the skill, capabilities, and workload capacity to complete the project described are invited to provide their capability statements to the point of contact listed below.  All responses will be used to determine the appropriate acquisition strategy for a potential acquisition. 

The purpose of this notice is to obtain a snapshot of current market capabilities and gain knowledge of potential small business sources to include small business in the following socioeconomic categories: Certified HUB Zone; Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB) and Serviced-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB); Veteran Owned Small Business (VOSB) and 8(a) small business concerns who can provide an Artificial Intelligence (AI) geotechnical borehole logging tool to augment current practices in data collection, management, and analysis. Other than small businesses are encouraged to express interest and submit capability statements as well.

Contractors’ capabilities will be reviewed solely for the purpose of determining an appropriate acquisition strategy to include whether this prospective action is appropriate to be set-aside for the small business community or should proceed as an unrestricted full and open acquisition.   Other than small businesses are encouraged to respond to this NOTICE to provide a greater context of current market capabilities. However, per the Federal Acquisition Regulations, preference will be given to the small business categories as listed above. In determining the acquisition strategy, the Government must ensure there is adequate competition among the potential pool of available contractors.

The Government estimates issuing a solicitation in mid-to-late May.

The Government intends to award Firm-Fixed Price Purchase Order.

The NAICS Code is 513210 (Software Publishers). The size standard is $47M.

Product Service Code is DA10 IT and Telecom – Business Application/Application Development Software as A Service.

SUMMARY OF REQUIREMENT:

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Sacramento District (SPK), is seeking sources for an existing Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product that provides AI-enabled geotechnical borehole logging and data management.

The solution must deliver:

• A digital field data entry application with real-time quality controls during input and when incorporating lab results.
• AI-driven real-time cross-referencing of field data (per ASTM D2488) against lab classifications (per ASTM D2487), with immediate discrepancy alerts.
• In-software AI assistance for workflow guidance and basic troubleshooting to minimize reliance on senior staff.
• Custom export functionality to reformat data for seamless integration into OpenGround Cloud.
• Ability to ingest, validate, and restructure gINT files (.gpj) with quality checks before migration to OpenGround Cloud.

The product must be mature, fully developed, and ready for rapid deployment—no developmental work or Government data for model training is allowed.

The contractor must provide a dedicated point of contact for initial user training and ongoing technical support throughout the contract period.

This requirement prioritizes an off-the-shelf SaaS tool that improves efficiency in geotechnical data collection, validation, AI-assisted quality assurance, and integration with USACE systems.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS (Contractors must provide capability statement that covers each):

• SaaS product must include a field data collection application for a tablet or laptop to generate digital data in the field. The field app must also contain basic data quality checks to reduce user input errors such as verifying that the percentages of soil materials match the designated soil type per ASTM D2488. The field app must be able to function without an internet connection, provide local backup of data, and readily communicate to a cloud database environment if internet connectivity is possible.
• The SaaS product needs to support templates, data entry, and data management for logging of soils, rock cores, monitoring wells, test pits, cone penetration tests (CPT), and dynamic cone penetrometer’s (DCP).
• SaaS product must include quality control tools for data management. There are logical principles that need to be automatically applied to the data to find discrepancies and errors. When lab data is acquired there needs to be an automated process to compare values from lab results to field observations and report errors and discrepancies to the user for evaluation. Lab data is generated using ASTM D2487 and field data is generated using ASTM D2488 – these systems are not identical, and variations are expected, though difficult to find manually. The software must be able to handle the reconciliation of the two datasets.  
• The SaaS product needs to utilize AI technology The software we need will utilize AI through automated data quality tools, as well as through a user support interface. The software needs to be able to assist data entry personnel in troubleshooting throughout the SaaS product. The SaaS product itself needs to tell the user if a key field is missing or if a step was skipped. The software needs to provide ongoing custom support to the USACE user in the workflow of the SaaS product.
• The AI functionality also needs to include an image analysis function to digitize legacy data from PDF or scanned image files. The historical data digitization function needs to be able to run quality control tools over the results as well.
• The SaaS product must have the ability to project spatial data using valid coordinate reference systems and have a mapping function to plot the boreholes in projected space. Mapping is required to be in 3D (latitude, longitude and depth). Connectivity with industry standard mapping software is necessary as well – ArcGIS Pro, Google Earth, Autodesk Civil 3D, LeapFrog, etc.
• SaaS product must support ingestion of common geotechnical data formats. This shall include, at minimum:

- Data files: .xlsx, .csv, .gpj

- Contextual Document and Data Formats: Support for common formats like .jpeg, .png, .tif, .pdf, .docx, and .txt for use in contextual analysis

• The SaaS product must have the ability to utilize an API (Application Programming Interface) to integrate into the USACE secure cloud environment. The software needs to be able to move data automatically from itself into OpenGround Cloud as our permanent database of record.
• The SaaS product must be deployed in the USACE AWS CWBI cloud. The SaaS product will be hosted within the USACE AWS CWBI Cloud. Offeror must provide the support for the following:
  • Ensure software application satisfies IL4 cloud security requirements.
  • Deployment of application using ECS and provide ECR support.
  • Defining requirements for AWS infrastructure elements needed to support the software.
  • DEV/TEST/PROD CD/CI pipelines.
  • Define requirements and provide support for RDS database storage.
  • Integration with CWBI backup and data retention polices.
  • Integration with CWBI approved user authentication services.
• Software maintenance to include application updates and security patches.
• The SaaS product must be fully provisioned for new users within 120 business days of a contract award or notice to proceed.
• The SaaS product must provide the ability to create geotechnical cross sections for use in subsurface correlation and interpretation. The cross sections must be able to show more than one borehole in spatial context to one another along a section that the user defines. The ability to pick tops and correlate units across boreholes is preferred. Custom presentation quality end products to use in PDF reports or in Autodesk Civil 3D (DXF) will be needed as well.

CAPABILITY STATEMENT

The following requests are designed to inform the US Army Corps of Engineers, Sacramento District, of current service contractor market capabilities. Please provide your response to the following.  The submission is limited to 10 pages.

1) Offeror's name, UEI or CAGE Code, address, point of contact, phone number, and e-mail address.

2) Offeror's experience and capability to complete contracts of this complexity and comparable work performed within the past 2 years. Describe the Prime’s self-performed effort, brief description of the project, description of execution strategy, customer name, timeliness of performance, customer satisfaction, and dollar value of the project.  

3) A description of the SaaS product functionality and how it meets the technical requirements as outlined above with included example figures of, user interface windows for the field app, AI tools, QC tools, and data table organization. Also include example deliverable products like a borehole log and cross section and possibly any reporting features.

4) A statement on the offeror’s standard timeline (in business days) to deploy the SaaS product in the CWBI AWS Cloud following a contract award, including a description of a typical establishment of application support and application startup process.

5) Offeror's socioeconomic type and business size (Certified HUB Zone; Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB) and Serviced-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB); Veteran Owned Small Business (VOSB) and 8(a) small business concerns).

The Capabilities Statement will not be considered an offer (proposal) or a bid for any future Request for Quotes/Proposal that may result from this notice. Moreover, it will not restrict the Government to an ultimate acquisition approach. 

This notice is for information and planning purposes only.  The respondents will not be notified of the results of any review conducted of the capability statements received.

Please notify this office in writing via email by April  14, 2026 at 11:00am PST. Submit response and information through email to: seth.k.teasdale@usace.army.mil. Please include Sources Sought No. W9123826S0016 in the subject line.