Description
This requirement was announced earlier as CI-01-12357 and was then delayed due to construction delays. Although the labs will not be occupied until after September 2002, the solicitation will proceed with an award to be made in a May/June time frame. A state-of-the-art consolidated campus is under construction in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina to house EPA's research operations. To ensure that their research data are of the highest quality possible, National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (NHEERL) investigators will need unconstrained access to purified water for a variety of purposes such as cleaning glassware; preparing dosing solutions, tissue culture media, and buffers for analytical assays and sensitive procedures (e.g., molecular biology techniques). For these and other purposes, the presence of contaminants in the water system can result in erroneous data at a considerable financial and reputational cost to the Agency, and so must be avoided The purpose of this contract is to obtain and install state-of-the-art water-purification systems capable of providing NHEERL research laboratories with Type I reagent-grade deionized water on demand. In addition, the Contractor shall provide these designated laboratories access to the water by installing sink-mounted, free-standing faucets as well as stub-outs to enable subsequent connections to laboratory dishwashers. The contractor shall provide all management, licensed personnel, and labor to perform the installation of the system in accordance with all applicable industry performance standards, national, state, and local codes, and federal specifications. The contractor shall be responsible for obtaining all permits as required for performance of the work. Permits shall be obtained from the county building inspector relative to the accomplishment of work required to meet the state of North Carolina building codes. The Contractor shall provide and install in the service corridors of each of 10 designated floors an Underwriters Laboratory (UL)-approved compact water-purification system capable of reliably providing water on demand that meets or exceeds the American Society for Testing and Materials' (ASTM) specifications for Type I reagent-grade water. In addition, one single-user, UL-approved system providing water of equal quality also shall be installed where indicated. Each of the 10 centrally located systems shall be designed to fit within the constraints of the usable area of the service corridor. Each installed system shall include: (1) a distribution loop that recirculates the purified water to all laboratory points of use; (2) one readily visible resistivity monitor to alert users to loss of water quality; and (3) an ultraviolet purifier. Of these features, the single-user system shall include only the resistivity monitor and ultraviolet purifier. For each of the 10 centralized systems, the Contractor shall make the following types of connections as designated on the attached floor plans: To enable unconstrained laboratory access to water, the Contractor shall purchase, install and connect to the floor's central water-purification system a total of 112 free-standing faucets at the designated locations. In each of the 5 rooms so designated on the attached plans, the Contractor also shall purchase, install, and connect to the water purification system, 1 wall stub-out that will enable subsequent connection to one or more dishwashers. For the single-user system, the Contractor shall purchase, install, and connect a free-standing faucet. A proposal site visit will be conducted in March. The specific date be established in the solicitation. Due to the complexity of the installation, companies must attend the meeting and the walk-through in order to be considered for award. Proposals will be due about four weeks after the site visit. The solicitation will be posted on the EPA web site about 2/22/02 and will be available only from the web site. All responsible sources may submit an offer which will be considered.