J&A Redaction for Public Release - W911PT23C0019

As described in FAR 13.501(a), procurement by other than full and open competition is necessary, as there are no other sources that can provide this specific machine tool to meet the needs of the Government. FAR 13.500 authorizes the use of simplified procedures for the acquisition of supplies and services in amounts greater than the simplified acquisition threshold, but not exceeding $7.5M, if the contracting officer reasonably expects that offers will include only commercial items.

In this case, the Tacchi Lathes have been determined to be a commercial item. The required large computercontrolled lathe is a highly specialized piece of precision, factory production equipment that work with custom-produced software programs and an array of elaborate work holding and cutting tools to produce cannon tubes for WVA’s customers.

WVA’s computer programs and hardware items are developed for use on a particular family of Tacchi machine tools and cannot be easily transported to similar machine tools from different manufacturers.