Technical Support for Developing and Approving Water Quality Standards and Crit   3

SOL-CI-16-00013 The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a requirement for the EPA's Office of Water, Standards and Health Protection Division (SHPD) for developing and approving water quality standards and criteria. The SHPD and its National Branch (NB), and its Regional Branch (RB), have multiple responsibilities under the Clean Water Act of 1987 (CWA), as amended, and the BEACH Act of 2000. These include directing and overseeing the national program for adoption of water quality standards (WQS) and application of those standards to beach, fish and shellfish monitoring and advisory programs. In accomplishing this mission, the program provides management strategies, guidance, assessments, technical support and tools for use by States and Indian Tribes in developing their water quality standards programs. NB and RB also provide programmatic support for the implementation and evaluation of Water Quality Standards (WQS) by identifying, assessing and controlling risks to aquatic ecosystems. In particular, the required technical support services include the following: providing technical support to EPA in the development of regulations, policies, and guidance on WQS program development and implementation; assisting EPA in providing and coordinating technical support for development, adoption, and implementation water quality standards and criteria to States and Indian tribes, including expert support; assisting EPA in establishing priorities for State and Tribal WQS programs; providing support in coordinating regional WQS reviews, approvals and disapprovals and national WQS promulgations; providing support in coordinating WQS information management and analysis; providing program related technical support, outreach, training, education to Regions, States, and Indian Tribes and other stakeholders; providing technical support for implementation of WQS including use attainability analyses, environmental assessments, economic benefit analysis, and total maximum daily load (TMDL) calculations including use of geographic information systems, multi-media environmental fate and transport models, and water quality based permitting; providing technical support for developing and managing cross-media and multi-Agency policies to ensure standards and exposure goals are attainted; and assisting EPA in coordinating policies with our partners in other federal agencies (especially the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service) to insure all legal mandates are met. The successful contractor shall provide all necessary labor, materials, and services in support of the efforts. EPA anticipates the proposed contract will have a base period consisting of 12 months with four (4) option periods of 12 months each, for a total potential period of performance of sixty (60) months. Approximately 6,000 LOE hours are anticipated for each contract period (including increased quantity option periods) for a total of 60,000 hours if all the potential LOE hours are realized. It is anticipated that a cost plus fixed-fee, level of effort, work assignment, term contract will result from this solicitation. This is a follow-on requirement, of the current EPA contracts EP-C-12-006 with Horsley Witten Inc. Potential exists for an organizational conflict of interest (COI) under any resulting procurement. Therefore for informational purposes areas of concerns are identified in the Attachment Draft COI Requirements . Final COI documents will be provided in the solicitation. The anticipated solicitation release date is middle March 2016, and the close date shall be approximately 30 days thereafter. The solicitation will be as a small business-set-aside basis. As a reminder, small businesses are required to perform at least 50 percent of the costs of the contract performance with their own personnel (See FAR 52.219-14) under a procurement set aside for small businesses. Notices of any modifications to this FBO procurement announcement, including Requests for Proposals and amendments, will be posted using the FedConnect web portal. FedConnect can be accessed at https://www.fedconnect.net/Fedconnect/. Interested parties are expected to download the solicitation and any subsequent amendments from the website and to monitor the status of the solicitation. All responsible sources may submit a proposal. The applicable NAICS code is 541620 with a size standard of $15 million. Contract award will be made in accordance with FAR Part 15- Contracting by Negotiation. The point of contact is Donna Reinhart, at (513)487-2114, reinhart.donna@epa.gov . FedConnect is a web portal that connects agencies and vendors to streamline the process of doing business with the federal government. Through FedConnect contractors will be able to receive, review and respond to contract pre- and post-award actions and documents such as correspondence, request for proposals, tasking instruments and contract modifications. The use of FedConnect also furthers the EPA TMs commitment to moving towards a paperless acquisition environment by reducing its carbon footprint and conducting its business in an ecologically friendly manner. There is no charge to use FedConnect. Vendors can register with FedConnect at www.fedconnect.net/FedConnect/. For assistance in registering or for other FedConnect technical questions please call the FedConnect Help Desk at (800) 899-6665 or email at support@fedconnect.net. In addition, all vendors must be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM), as this facilitates registration for FedConnect. Please note that vendors MUST have their SAM profile set to public otherwise FedConnect will not be able to access the SAM information required to validate vendor credentials. Registration may be completed and information regarding the registration process may be obtained at http://www.sam.gov. There is no charge for registration in SAM.