Cali Jones, Coordinator 1/4/18. See attached approval.

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2 Cali Jones Cali Jones, Coordinator 1/4/18 Brian M. Sargent Brian Sargent, Asst Director, Designee 1/5/18 See attached approval. 4:00 p.m. 4:00 p.m Cali Jones

3 Cali Jones From: Sent: To: Cc: Subject: Brian Sargent Friday, January 05, :22 PM Cali Jones Myrnellie Nido FW: Sole Source (Civil Engineering - Triaxial System) FYI Brian From: William Merck Sent: Friday, January 05, :08 PM To: Brian Sargent <Brian.Sargent@ucf.edu> Cc: Angie Carloss <Angie.Carloss@ucf.edu> Subject: RE: Sole Source (Civil Engineering Triaxial System) Approved. Bill William F. Merck II Vice President Administration and Finance Chief Financial Officer From: Brian Sargent Sent: Friday, January 05, :51 AM To: William Merck <William.Merck@ucf.edu> Cc: Angie Carloss <Angie.Carloss@ucf.edu> Subject: FW: Sole Source (Civil Engineering Triaxial System) Importance: High Mr. Merck, I support the attached sole source. Requesting your approval/disapproval. Supporting information below. Greg Robinson and Nellie Nido have delegated their authority to me as they are both out of the office today. Please see page 15 of the Signature Authority document for reference. Regards, Brian From: Cali Jones Sent: Friday, January 05, :29 AM To: Brian Sargent <Brian.Sargent@ucf.edu> Cc: Myrnellie Nido <nellie.nido@ucf.edu> Subject: Sole Source (Civil Engineering Triaxial System) Importance: High 1

4 Hi Brian, Please review the attached sole source from the Civil Engineering department. Product/Service: Customized Dynamic Triaxial System Supplier: GDS Instruments Cost: $ 129, GDS Instruments is the only supplier able to the meet below requirement. A base built actuator, which none of the other suppliers are capable of producing. In addition to the actuator, electromechanical operation, balanced ram, elevated load and pressure ranges, selection between pre programmed or user defined waveforms, adaptive control firmware, test performance, and upgradeability are also unique features of the proposed system. Thank you, Cali Sole source received: 9:02 a.m. 2

5 1. Describe the product(s) and/or service(s) and anticipated use thereof in layman s language. The proposed device is called Advanced Triaxial Testing System and includes attachments to also perform Constant Rate of Strain tests in soils. The main purpose of the device is to be used for research purposes in Geotechnical Engineering and is used to characterize soils in the laboratory. The features that the device has are unique in the geotechnical engineering community and will place UCF and the geotechnical engineering program within the CECE department in a cutting edge in geotechnical soil testing. The device will drastically improve the testing capabilities of the geotechnical laboratory at UCF so that research can be developed in soil testing under any triaxial testing loading condition and constant rate of strain or loading with back and pore pressure measurements. The provider of the proposed equipment is the world leader in geotechnical laboratory equipment for research purposes. This is a device that will make our geotechnical program more competitive and constitutes the most cost-effective way to improve our testing capabilities. The proposed device is versatile and includes all the components that we will need to perform cutting edge research in soils. 2. (A) State in detail why only this and no other product(s)/service(s) will satisfy the department s requirements. Because of the large number of unique features of the product that is requested, I decided to put together the attached document to describe in great detail each feature of this device (see attached file to this summary). However, a summary of the main reasons why this is the only product are summarized as follows: 1) The device has an electromechanical operation that offers optimum performance in load ranges up to 100kN, avoiding the inherent control difficulties of pneumatic systems and the noise and maintenance costs of hydraulic systems. 2) The device is very quiet in operation, no external, noisy pneumatic or hydraulic powerpacks are required. 3) There is a service free operation for 5 years. 4) There is no high-pressure oil / air lines need to be run around the laboratory. 5) There is precise control under load or displacement control with sub-micron/newton resolution which is unique in the market. 6) The system performs to full load / displacement specification regardless of the imposed loads. 7) The proposed 2Hz/10kN DYNTTS by GDS instruments (UK) combines a 10kN load range, 2MPa cell pressure, a balanced ram, all in a compact and stiff integrated design with a base-built actuator. 8) The system is customized to be able to incorporate Constant Rate of Strain testing capabilities.

6 9) The system accurately controls cell pressure avoiding fluctuations related to the use of an air chamber and the balanced ram compensates for the up-thrust of the ram exerted by the cell pressure, enabling the full load range of the system to be used. 10) The system can be used to test harder samples than regular soils. The system enables testing at a higher effective stress and higher overall stresses. 11) The system has versatility evidenced with a very wide range of tests. Large amount of data points are obtained per cycle for dynamic testing and for user-defined waveforms. 12) The system automatically adjusts the control gain values based on the observed specimen stiffness, enabling a consistent loading amplitude to be applied to the test specimen for the whole duration of the test. 13) The system has a complete range of upgrade options available, including Bender Elements, Unsaturated testing, local strain or pressure measurement, permeability, and temperature control. (B) State why the product(s) and/or service(s) are available from only one source and how that determination was made. Explain the research conducted to support this claim. GDS (Proposed vendor) GCTS The proposer contacted other universities to see what type of devices they had to satisfy research demands in advanced soil testing and major universities including and not limited to: Northwestern Univ., UC Berkeley, UCLA, CSU Fullerton, Ohio State, Univ. of Maine, Imperial College, among others (the list is larger than about 500 universities) have devices made by the same manufacturer. The proposer analyzed the features of other competitors to GDS and compared other systems currently available in the market (just the triaxial component and not including the customized features required by Dr. Arboleda). The results are briefly summarized as follows: System Electro- Load range Cell & back Base-built Balanced mechanical >/= 1OkN pressure 2MPa actuator ram YES YES YES YES YES NO, HYDRAULIC YES YES NO NOT SPECIFIED CONTROLS YES YES NO, 1MPa NO NOT SPECIFIED GEOCOMP NO, HYDRAULIC NO NO, 1,4MPa NO NOT SPECIFIED VJT YES NO, 5kN YES NO NOT SPECIFIED (C) Provide an explanation to support the belief that the price is fair and reasonable.

7 Other brands like WILLE and GCTS were evaluated but the first one was more expensive and does not include bender elements and internal instrumentation and the second option (GCTS) even though is cheaper, it does not include the features just described in previous sections and it is a pneumatic device which is not accurate for dynamic triaxial testing. The proposer evaluated the alternatives of the providers shown in the table before, and most of those alternatives do not even comply with the needs of the research goals of the proposed device, so further quotation was stopped at that stage. The proposer comes from a University in California where he had the same device for his research and a similar process was developed at that institution to finally prove that GDS was the most cost-effective solution and was the only alternative that satisfied the technical requirements.

8 From: Sheryl Shelley Sent: Thursday, January 04, :13 PM To: Cali Jones Subject: RE: Sole source for dynamic triaxial system for the geotechnical laboratory Hi Cali, This was the response from Dr. Arboleda. Please let me know if you need additional information. Do you still have the separate summary provided previously? A brief answer to that question is that the interpretation is not correct. Based on those 5 categories that I was able to summarize: GDS satisfies 5 out of 5. GCTS satisfies only 2 out of 5. Controls satisfies 2 out of 5. Geocomp: None out of 5. VJT: 2 out of 5. That is only the specs that I was able to summarize in a table form but please see the document that I provided as a whole. The eight (8) points that I summarized in that document (electromechanical operation, base-built actuator, balanced ram, elevated load and pressure ranges, selection between pre-programmed or user-defined waveforms, adaptive control firmware, test performance, and upgradeability) are also unique features of the proposed system. Luis Sherry Shelley Accountant Civil, Environmental, & Construction Engineering Office: Fax: From: Cali Jones Sent: Thursday, January 4, :54 PM To: Sheryl Shelley <Sheryl.Shelley@ucf.edu> Subject: RE: Sole source for dynamic triaxial system for the geotechnical laboratory Importance: High Sherry, I need to clarify the comparison chart to be sure I m reading it correctly, before I submit it for review & approval. So, if you sum up the the results provided in the comparison chart, the only requirement that GDS is capable of achieving, meaning no other suppliers, is a base-built actuator, is that correct? I see other

9 suppliers are able to meet some of the requirements but not all, like GDS. So, the actuator is the only specification that sets GDS apart from the other suppliers, please confirm as well. Thanks! Cali