Announcement of a Sole Source Purchase

Provide New cooling equipment for hospital data center and backup power sources. Vendor will replace several existing Liebert units that provide cooling critical to the stability of the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure at University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System (UI Health). The proposal is to install several new Vertiv (formerly Liebert) units. The air-cooled chillers and dry coolers currently serving the hospital data center and uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) were installed in 2001. The condenser coils of the equipment have degraded, and the equipment has become obsolete making it difficult or impossible to find certain replacement parts.

The university, on information and belief, has concluded that only one vendor can meet its need or can meet the need economically. That vendor is ThermFlo, Inc. The university has provided detailed justification to support its conclusion as shown on the attached Sole Source Justification Form.

Although the university has presented this as a sole source procurement, we are seeking competitive information from firms with the capability of meeting the university's need (even if performed in a manner different from what has been presented) to contact us and provide sufficient information to show the need can be met. If we receive that information, the Chief Procurement Officer will offer a public hearing to consider the matter. Hearing information is described below.

The University has determined that this purchase is only economically available from this source because the compatibility of equipment, accessories, replacement parts, or service is a paramount consideration. The air-cooled chillers and dry coolers currently serving the hospital data center and uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) are past useful life (20 years). Installed in 2001, the condenser coils of the equipment have degraded to the point of needing to use supplemental sprinklered water just to keep the equipment running in cooling mode, at drastically reduced capacity and increased energy consumption. Additionally, the equipment has become obsolete making it difficult or impossible to find certain replacement parts. No backup system currently exists for this equipment, putting the ability of the hospital servers to remain functioning at massive risk. The impact of an outage of the servers would be catastrophic and severely hinder the ability of the hospital to remain in operation, including inaccessibility of patient software, intake/discharge functionality, and medication distribution.