Sources Sought for Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) Training Scheduling and Resource Management Software

Questions & Answers / Clarifications

This document provides responses to vendor questions regarding a SAM.gov opportunity, clarifying requirements for a system to schedule training.

• Student Scheduling: The system is expected to help generate annual schedules of classes and consider resources, but not directly schedule individual students. It needs to handle segmented training (e.g., New Hire training) and scheduling rules.
• Tracking: The system does not need to track individual student qualifications or training expirations. A separate system handles tracking required training completion.
• Training Scope: The opportunity is not related to pilot training, despite a potential misstatement in the SAM.gov posting. The focus is on training for Aviation Safety Inspectors (ASI), International participants, Aircraft Certification ASIs, and Industry/military personnel.
• Resource Scheduling: The system must track equipment/resource availability and also schedule these resources.
• Throughput: The system will handle approximately 8,000 students per year, with about 60 offerings per month or 700 per year (including virtual and in-person).
• Personnel: The system needs to track hundreds of instructors and be scalable for numerous physical and virtual classrooms.

Clarifies that the system's scope is focused on administrative scheduling of training resources and classes, not individual student qualification tracking or pilot training. Vendors should focus their capability statements on the described training scheduling requirements and not on aircraft training experience.

Statement of Objectives (SOO)

This Statement of Objectives (SOO) outlines the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) need for a Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software solution to manage annual training schedules and resources. The current manual processes for scheduling and resource allocation are inefficient, lacking automation for coordination and deconfliction. The FAA seeks a COTS solution to enhance efficiency, accuracy, visibility, and enterprise-level coordination of training operations.

• Training Schedule Development: Creation of multi-month/annual calendars, support for multiple scheduling years, building "String" course schedules, recurring course scheduling, scenario planning, and forecasting. Drag-and-drop capability is preferred.

• Classroom and Virtual Room Assignment: Automated assignment of physical classrooms based on capacity, equipment, location, and historical utilization. Integration with virtual platforms and simultaneous management of physical/virtual rooms.

• Resource Allocation: Instructor assignment and workload management, tracking of contract and government instructors, managing equipment/resource availability, and differentiating instructor types for utilization.

• Conflict Detection and Deconfliction: Automated identification of double-booked instructors, overlapping room assignments, and resource conflicts, with alerting and decision-support recommendations.

• Reporting and Analytics: Utilization reporting, performance metrics, capacity planning, historical trends, exportable reports, and dashboard-level executive visibility.

• Access and Security: Role-based user permissions, audit trail capability, and compliance with Federal cybersecurity requirements (FedRAMP preferred for cloud-based solutions).

• Integration (Desired): Capability to integrate with Learning Management Systems (LMS) and calendar systems (e.g., Outlook), and data import/export via API.

• The solution must be commercially available (COTS).

• Custom-developed systems are out of scope.

• Configuration is acceptable; extensive custom coding is not preferred.

• The solution must be scalable and support both on-site and remote training environments.

• Reduced manual scheduling effort

• Improved scheduling accuracy

• Increased visibility into training capacity

• Optimized room utilization

• Prevention of instructor and facility conflicts

• Leadership-level reporting capability

• Support for long-range planning and operational forecasting

Vendors are requested to provide:

• Product name and description
• Confirmation of COTS status
• Description of scheduling, resource allocation, and deconfliction capabilities
• Hosting model
• FedRAMP status (if applicable)
• Typical implementation timeline
• Pricing structure (ballpark)
• Federal Government past performance (if available)
• Demonstration availability

Responses are for market research purposes only and do not constitute a commitment to issue a solicitation or award a contract.