Category 2 includes many different services in support of the telecommunications infrastructure, offered within three basic areas:

The Professional Series includes Network Engineers, Site Managers, System Integration Engineers, LAN/MAN/WAN integrators, Quality Assurance Engineers, and other engineering subject matter experts.

The Technical Series includes Network Systems Managers, Operations Systems Security Specialists, Communication Analysts, Database Administrators, Programmers, Configuration Management Specialists, Trainers, Cable Splicers, and Network Technicians, among others.

The E-Business Series includes Business Process Engineers, Web Architects, Webmasters and others.

Section C.4 of the contract provides additional details on the types of skilled labor offered under Category 2. An attachment at the bottom of this page contains a list of subcategories under Category 2.

General Characteristics
When to use Category 2
Category 2 Approaches
Examples

General Characteristics

1. Professional services orientation

• Professional skills
• Technical skills
• E-business skills

2. Equipment incidental (i.e. ODCs; not provisioning of significant hardware requirements)

3. Scope

• Low end: unmanaged purchase of hours of a certain expertise (e.g. 400 hours of UNIX systems administration)
• High end: managed delivery of the product professional services (e.g. management of the design of a LAN/WAN and development of requirements specifications for equipment and communications services necessary to implement the design)

When to use Category 2:

1. Require specific professional skills without management

• Hours of specific technical skills
• Customer provides project management

2. Project level professional services

• Management
• Staff mix and quantities determined by industry partner/offeror
• Responsible for project completion and delivery of a result/activity

3. Significant hardware acquisition not required

Category 2 Approaches

Sample 1 (simple): Hourly professional staff services of a particular type for a fixed period of time (e.g., 600 hours of systems development effort)

Sample 2 (complex): Acquire professional services to manage and accomplish specific projects

Examples

1. Engineering design for a new facility for voice, data, and video communications

2. Plan the integration of two existing customer information systems

• Analyze existing systems (hardware, software, databases)
• Design integrated system

3. Perform a local network security assessment

4. Design a data warehouse

• Collect and analyze requirements
• Propose architecture
• Propose hardware & software options
• Propose interfaces from source systems to data warehouse

5. Customer service functions (i.e., voice help desk services)

• Perform systems maintenance and upgrades
• Perform maintenance and repairs
• Inventory management
• Emergency services

6. Billing verification

• Examine bills and determine accuracy