SYNOPSIS/PRE-SOLICITATION NOTICE FOR FINE CHINAWARE The U.S. Department of State (DoS) intends to conduct a competitive procurement for a contractor to provide high quality fine china for official U. S. Government representational residences overseas. The china must be vitrified and free of imperfections or blemishes. The crested and uncrested china patterns used by the Department of State have been in existence for more than fifty years. The contractor that is awarded the contract shall be required to duplicate the color, size, shape, and decorations of the existing chinaware. The contractor must have a warehouse facility to stockpile the chinaware for delivery orders and to accommodate all other packing and shipping requirements. All chinaware produced under this contract shall be stored in the Continental United States at the contractor’s expense until ordered out by the Department of State. At present, there are approximately 2,000 cubic feet of chinaware owned by the U.S. Government being stored at the present contractor’s warehouse. The contractor selected for this award shall receive and accept the existing stock of chinaware and maintain it according to the terms and conditions of the chinaware contract. This procurement will be a 100% set-aside for small business. North American Industry Classification System Code is 327112. Award of a Fixed-Price, Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity contract, with a base year and four, one-year option periods is anticipated. A pre-solicitation conference will be held at 10:00 AM, EST on Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 1701 N. Fort Myer Drive, Arlington, VA 22209. All interested parties must sign-up to attend the pre-solicitation conference no later than May 23, 2008. Only up to two (2) representatives from each company are permitted, and attendees must submit identifying information for entrance to the pre-solicitation conference. Please bring a valid picture ID to check in at the Guard Desk at 1701 N. Fort Myer Drive, Arlington, VA . Please send the following information no later than 5:00 PM, EST on May 23, 2008 to Blondell Taylor at e-mail address:
[email protected] : (1) company name, (2) name(s) of up to two representatives, address(es), phone number(s), and e-mail address(es). At the pre-solicitation conference, each represented company will receive a broken piece of DoS china for comparison purposes. Companies must be present at the pre-solicitation conference to receive a sample and to be considered for award. For further consideration interested companies that attended the pre-solicitation conference will be required to submit a representative sample of their work, consisting of one gold-rimmed, charger plate and one gold-rimmed tea cup, both should be: (1) high quality fine china; (2) ivory in color; and (3) true vitrified fine china, free of imperfection or blemishes. DoS will require those companies in the pre-solicitation conference that wish to compete for the above mentioned contract to provide representative samples of fine chinaware to DoS/OBO no later than 4:00 PM EST, Wednesday, June 11, 2008 to the following address: (for Courier address: Attn: Blondell Taylor, A/LM/AQM/FDCD/MS, Suite L-600, 1701 N. Fort Myer Drive, Arlington, VA 22209, Phone No. (703) 875-6961; For U. S. Postal Address: Blondell Taylor, A/LM/AQM/FDCD/MS, Suite L-600, PO Box 9115, Arlington, VA 22219. You must attend the pre-solicitation conference to be eligible to submit the fine chinaware sample. Submitted chinaware samples will not be returned to the companies. The government intends to evaluate this project under lowest price, technically acceptable and do so under a two step evaluation process. First step: The companies’ submissions of the representative sample chinaware will be evaluated on a Pass/Fail basis. Only companies receiving a pass rating after the government’s technical evaluation of the sample chinaware as described in this pre-solicitation notice will be eligible to receive the Request for Proposal and in turn submit a proposal to the government. If the company receives a fail rating, it will not be invited to submit a proposal, and no further award consideration will be made for that contractor. The government’s evaluation will be made based on the characteristic factors outlined above in this pre-solicitation notice for submitted fine chinaware sample products. Second step: If a company receives a pass rating, the company will be sent an RFP and be allowed to submit an offer including a sample of the actual china that will be produced if the offeror is awarded the contract.