THE U. S. NUCLEAR REGUALTORY COMMISSION (NRC) is issuing this Request For Information (RFI) as a means of conducting market research or a market survey to determine the availability and potential technical capability of the business community to provide all management, supervision, administration, and labor for stenographic-based captioning for real-time verbatim captioning services. These services will be used for hearings and/or meetings to be held, sometimes simultaneously, in various locations throughout the United States, primarily at the NRC Headquarters in Rockville, Maryland and the Las Vegas, Nevada hearing site. The applicable North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code assigned to this acquisition is 561492, Court Reporting and Stenotype Services, with a size standard of $7.0 million dollars. In keeping with the NRC’s mission to protect the public health and safety in the Nuclear Reactor, Materials and (High and Low level) Waste arenas, many Commission meetings are held as part of the decision making process of licensing nuclear facilities. Aside and separate from the Commission meetings, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (ASLBP) conduct many adjudicatory hearings for the Commission on licensing and enforcement matters, usually at a location near the site where the dispute arose. The ASLBP hearings will require real-time reporting captioning services that will interact with the agency’s digital information retrieval and display system know as the Digital Data Management System (DDMS). The DDMS will be operational in hearing room facilities located in Rockville, Maryland, and Las Vegas, Nevada and in various other locations throughout the United States. Many lawyers to these proceedings require use of the hearing transcripts prior to the start of the next day of hearing. Therefore, electronic transcripts, submitted via the NRC’s Electronic Information Exchange system, for these proceedings, will be expected on an expedited and most times overnight turn-around basis. IMPORTANTLY, THE COMMISSION AND ASLBP PROCEEDINGS WILL REQUIRE THE CAPTIONIST TO PERFORM ON-SITE AT THE MEETING/PROCEEDINGS. REMOTE CAPTIONING IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. Occasionally, captioning services will be required to be added to a videotape after a meeting has been held. To increase public confidence in the transparency and fairness of the regulatory process, one of the primary means of keeping the public informed is to open the proceedings to a wider audience by using real-time captioning/reporting. These proceedings are an extremely important, technically complex, and closely scrutinized part of the ASLBP and Commission’s daily operations. THERE IS NO SOLICITATION AT THIS TIME. This request for capability information does not constitute a request for proposal; submission of any information in response to this market survey is purely voluntary; the Government assumes no financial responsibility for any costs incurred. All firms are invited to submit a response. If your organization has the potential capacity to perform these contract services for NRC free of Organizational Conflict of Interest (OCOI), please provide the following information. Organizations responding to this market survey should keep in mind that only focused and pertinent information is requested. 1) Organization name, address, email address, web site address and telephone number. 2) How long has your company been in operations? 3) What is the size of your business? 4) What is the ownership status of your company (e.g., service-disabled veteran-owned, woman-owned, 8(a), etc.)? 5) How many people does your company employ, including consultants? Please break down the mix between the two categories. 6) List any companies or government agencies your company either plans to or has performed work for related to this RFI. Describe the work performed. 7) Although no geographic restriction is anticipated, if responding organizations are located outside the Washington Metropolitan area, indicate how the organization would coordinate with the NRC program office located in Rockville, MD to provide support to multiple sites. 8) Would your organization be capable of: • Captioning on-site during meetings, as remote captioning is not acceptable. • Meeting or exceeding a 98% accuracy rate while captioning • Providing next day electronic transcripts 9) Describe any other information your company deems relevant for this RFI. Interested firms responding to this RFI are encouraged to structure capability statements in the order of the areas of consideration noted above. Responding firms should send tailored capability statement electronically to
[email protected] within fifteen (15) calendar days from the date of publication of this notice. This market survey is being conducted through the FedBizOpps to reach the widest possible audience and to gather current market information.