A--Notice of Intent to Award a Sole-Source Purchase Order to Appalachian State U

It is the responsibility of interested parties to check http://www.epa.gov/oamhpod1/adm_placement/ozone/ regularly for any updates to this announcement. Further updates will not be posted here. Special Study to Confirm Foliar Symptoms Due to Ozone Exposure of Cut-Leaf Coneflower from Rocky Mountain National ParkPosted Date: February 2, 2011 Procurement Office: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Headquarters Procurement Operations Division (3803R) 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20460 Response Date: February 16, 2011 NAICS Code: 541620 The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), Office of Acquisition Management, intends to award a sole source purchase order to Appalachian State University for its Department of Biology to conduct a study to confirm visible foliar symptoms due to ozone exposure in populations of cut-leaf coneflower from Rocky Mountain National Park. The period of performance will be from award of the purchase order to December 31, 2012. EPA intends to make this sole-source award under the authority of FAR 13.106-1(b)(1) which authorizes contract actions when the agency's need for the supply or service is only available from one responsible source and that no other supply or service will satisfy the Government's minimum needs. NO SOLICITATION OR REQUEST FOR QUOTE (RFQ) IS AVAILABLE. No contract will be awarded on the basis of offers received in response to this notice. Notwithstanding, any firm who believes it is capable of meeting EPA's requirement as stated herein may submit a response, which if received within the allotted response date, will be considered. Responses to this posting must be in writing. All questions should be directed to the Contract Specialist listed below. It is the responsibility of interested parties to check this website regularly for updates to this announcement.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DRAFT STATEMENT OF WORK INTRODUCTION The U.S. Clean Air Act requires the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to carry out periodic reviews of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for major "criteria" air pollutants and to revise the NAAQS for a given pollutant, as appropriate. As part of these reviews, the National Center for Environmental Assessment - RTP Division (NCEA-RTP) within EPA's Office of Research and Development (ORD) assesses the newly available scientific information in Integrated Science Assessment (ISA) documents (formerly known as Criteria Documents) that provide the scientific basis for the reviews of the NAAQS for particulate matter (PM), ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), and lead (Pb). One of the major criteria pollutants affecting vegetation and ecosystems in the U.S. is O3. Information on how, where and at what levels O3 is affecting vegetation is critical to NCEA?s ISA?s. Scientific information on O3 effects in National Parks and other protected natural areas is especially useful for informing the review of the secondary O3 standard. For the past several years the National Park Service has been surveying for O3-induced diagnostic visible foliar injury within the National Parks. Diagnostic foliar injury has been found in cut-leaf coneflower in the National Parks in the eastern U.S. for many years. Recently, visible injury has been found in populations of cut-leaf coneflower in riparian areas in the Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP). However, laboratory experiments are needed to confirm that the injury found in RMNP is a result of O3 exposure. The work in this project is designed to use O3 exposure chambers to look at leaf damage to cut-leaf cone-flower populations from eastern and western National Parks. This work will confirm whether or not the injury observed in RMNP is from O3 pollution. This knowledge is critical for understanding extent of O3 effects in protected areas in the western U.S., what species are sensitive to O3 in the western U.S. and what locations researchers should look for O3-induced visible leaf injury. This project will also build upon a long foundation of knowledge obtained from the surveying program at the National Park Service and provides a critical step to make the surveys more relevant to the scientific review of the secondary O3-NAAQS. TASKS The Contractor shall accomplish the following tasks and shall complete these tasks according to the estimated deliverable schedule below. Task 1. Submit a Joint Quality Management / Quality Assurance Project Plan The Contractor shall submit to the EPA Project Officer a Joint Quality Management(JQM) / Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP) that describes how the quality of all data, bothprimary and secondary, will be managed and assessed. The JQM/QAPP must be submittedwithin 20 days of award of the contract and must be approved before any work begins. Task 2. Conduct Literature Review The Contractor shall use available search engines and other appropriate literature search strategies to locate relevant publications that will provide information relevant to O3-induced diagnostic foliar injury. Particular focus should be made on the cut-leaf coneflower species, characteristics of O3 injury, and statistical data analytic approaches. Task 3. Purchase and collect materials and set up experiment The Contractor shall purchase all materials to prepare exposure systems for the experiment, grow and maintain plants and other relevant material. The Contractor shall also collect plant material from the relevant field locations. The contract shall perform the necessary work to have exposure systems ready for the experiment. Task 4. Conduct initial exposure tests, prepare preliminary report The Contractor shall conduct initial exposure tests for an initial time period determined with guidance from the of the technical project officer. The Contractor shall prepare a preliminary report on the performance of the exposure system. Task 5. Conduct full exposure experiments, maintain plants and collect data The Contractor shall conduct the exposure experiment for two seasons and maintain the plants throughout the experiment. Hourly O3 data shall be collected and sent to the technical project officer. Task 6. Analyze Data The Contractor shall provide figures, tables and data analyses to the EPA Technical Project Officer. Task 7. Prepare Final Report The Contractor shall prepare a final report which will consist of (1) literature review; (2)material and methods; (3) results; (4) discussion; (5) conclusions; (6) references. Task 8. Participation in Conference Calls and Face-to-Face Meetings At times it may be necessary to discuss progress and data analysis approaches with theEPA Technical Project Officer. It is estimated that about six conference calls may be necessary for these discussions. Each call is expected to be one hour in duration. The Contractor will be notified at least two weeks in advance of a conference call. Some meetings may be needed face-face at the site of the experiments or at the EPA RTP facilities. These meetings will be on an as-needed basis DELIVERABLES AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICES The Contractor shall provide all intermediate and final data sets and programming code to the EPA Technical Project Officer for all data products specified in the above tasks. All data products must be well documented so that the EPA Technical Project Officer can clearly understand the steps taken to arrive at each intermediate and final data set. The Contractor shall provide written products to the EPA PO as specified in the above tasks. All products must be of high quality, written in a clear concise style, with a logical organization and presentation. Products not adhering to these standards, or substantially lacking scientific quality, will not be accepted. The Contractor shall use current EPA guidelines for performance of work, unless otherwise specified. The Contractor shall provide all written materials and responses in both hard copy and electronic format. Copies of all completed text, tables, and figures shall be submitted to EPA by the deadlines established in the scope of work. Contractors should also submit word processing disks or email electronic files. All of NCEA?s word processing activities are performed in Microsoft Word (Windows). Macintosh and DOS files are unacceptable. Similarly, WordPerfect files are unacceptable. Figures and other graphics are acceptable in the following formats: Adobe Illustrator (.AI), CorelDraw (.CDR), WP Presentation (.WPG), Lotus Pic (.PIC), MACPICT (.PCT), PostScript (.EPS) (include 100-dpi TIF preview), TIFF Bitmap (.TIF), Photoshop (.PSD, .JPG, or .GIF)(all bitmap formats should be at least 200 dpi for acceptable reproduction on 300-dpi laser printers), Windows Metafiles (.WMF), Freehand (.FH), and Excel (.XLS). Tables prepared using Word are preferred. For guidance in the area of editorial style, use The ACS Style Guide and the United States Government Printing Office Style Manual. The point of contact for this procurement is Tricia Slusser, Contract Specialist, at [email protected].