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FBO DAILY - FEDBIZOPPS ISSUE OF SEPTEMBER 08, 2013 FBO #4306
DOCUMENT

R -- History Office and Archives - Attachment

Notice Date

9/6/2013
 

Notice Type

Attachment
 

NAICS

541618 — Other Management Consulting Services
 

Contracting Office

Strategic Acquisition Center - Frederick;Department of Veterans Affairs;321 Ballenger Center Drive, Suite 125;Frederick MD 21703
 

ZIP Code

21703
 

Solicitation Number

VA119A14Q0131
 

Archive Date

11/5/2013
 

Point of Contact

LeAnna Stith
 

E-Mail Address

gic
 

Small Business Set-Aside

Total Small Business
 

Description

The Department of Veterans Affairs intends to award a fixed price contract to a single vendor to conduct a study and produce a report, which the VA will use to create a VA History Office and Archive. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) seeks to establish an agency-wide VA History Office and Archive. The goal of the office and archive would be to preserve its heritage and material culture, dating back to 1776, and to develop history outreach programs to benefit the VA, Veterans, and the public. The VA is the second-largest civilian U.S. Government department and this study will serve as a blueprint for establishing the VA's first History Office and affiliated Archive facility. The VA currently has a Historic Preservation Office (HPO) and history programs located within two of its three administrations, as required by the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act. The first history program was established at the National Cemetery Administration (NCA) in 2001, followed by one at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) in 2006. No historians serve in the office of the VA Secretary or the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA). To ensure that implementation of a departmental History Office meets the agency's needs and professional and federal government standards, the VA seeks an experienced professional history consultant with proven past performance on a similar project within the past eight years. The vendor shall consider other federal agencies with established, active, and comparable History offices with archive functions during the process of evaluating and meeting the VA's needs. The VA defines its need and the study scope as interdisciplinary-to encompass all functions appropriate to a comprehensive history program (i.e., historical research, oral history, educational outreach, exhibits, historic-resource documentation, collections), historic preservation (i.e., construction planning, compliance, cultural resource policy, historic-resource documentation, advocacy), and archives management (i.e. collections development and management, storage, accountability, artifact conservation, exhibits, IT). The goal of the study is to provide a written plan, which the VA can use to establish a departmental History Office and Archive. The commercially available services needed would include, but are not limited to: "Identifying mandatory and professional standards applicable to the project to assure that professional qualifications, standards, and laws associated with federally owned cultural real property, historic records, and artifacts are considered in developing a federal agency history and archive program. "Meeting with and interviewing key staff of Executive Branch federal history programs and other federal history offices to ascertain their operational structure and placement within their respective agencies, budgets, staffing, programs, etc., to determine the best model for VA's history and archive program. "Meeting with and interviewing all VA historians and VA Federal Preservation Office (FPO) staff, along with supervisors and senior management, to identify their current placement within the organization, evaluate program needs or gaps related to historical research, history projects, archival identification and artifact collection storage and management needs, historic preservation activities and compliance, cultural property preservation policies, outreach, etc., to assess and make recommendations for the budgetary, operational, and staffing needs to support an agency-wide history office and archive. "Meeting with staff from VBA, VA libraries, Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISNs), and field staff to ascertain the scope of their historical and archival collections and assess needs for preserving their history and historic collections. "Contacting likely sources for information about VA artifacts and historic materials housed in VHA libraries, VA medical centers, hospitals (including former National Homes), VISNs, non-VA sites, private collections, etc., to ascertain the full scope of VA collections and their potential preservation management costs and storage needs. "The contractor is expected to conduct thorough interviews with all recommended parties within and outside VA as part of this study. At least 50 interviews are anticipated and the contractor will generate written summaries of all interviews as part of the deliverables. "The contractor shall have demonstrated knowledge in broad cultural resource subject matter relevant to federal history, historic preservation, and archive program responsibilities. The contractor shall have demonstrated past-performance expertise as the lead on a similar study/project of the same scale and complexity. The key personnel working on the project shall meet the Secretary of the Interior's Professional Qualifications for history, historic preservation and curation, and related disciplines. oKey personnel must be skilled and experienced history, collections management, archives, historic preservation or related disciplines with a minimum of 18 graduate degree hours in history or related discipline and 10 years of demonstrated experience as a professional historian for successful accomplishment of the work to be performed under this contract. Key team staff experience must include curation and collections management expertise of a similar scale and complexity. The contractor shall have successfully completed a similar project/study of a similar scale and complexity within the past 8 years, preferably a federal agency history assessment. "The contractor shall successfully, through evaluation, analysis, and planning, deliver a comprehensive plan containing recommendations and alternatives for establishing a VA History Office and Archive. The report content shall include (but is not limited to): oRecommendations for organizational placement of the VA History Office and Archive and related administrative (re)alignments; oAn operational model for the VA History Office and Archive with recommended personnel/ titles/brief position descriptions/grades; oA strategic plan for implementing the VA History Office and Archive accountability within other VA strategic plans; oRecommendations for coordination and communication among existing VA history programs, FPO, other VA offices, and the VA History Office; oRecommendations for existing VA history programs based on current workload and scope to include: additional staff/expertise, evaluation of responsibilities and correcting gaps, space/facilities, equipment; oIdentify policies required for VA History Office/Archive operations (i.e., collection management statements and plans, research SOPs, Federal compliance directives and policies, agreements, etc.). oIdentify long term growth, costs, and needs to support the archives and preservation of historic collections. The Government intends this performance-based requirement to be issued as a total small business set aside for a period of approximately six months. The NAICS code for this requirement is 541618 and the size standard is $14M. The Request for Quote (RFQ) is anticipated for release to the vendor community on or about the week of September 23, 2013. The RFQ, RFQ amendments, and questions and answers related to the procurement shall only be available via the Internet at http://www.fedbizopps.gov. Offerors are responsible for accessing the website. Interested parties must respond to the RFQ to be considered for award. At this time, no written solicitation document is available, telephone requests shall not be honored, and no list of offerors shall be maintained.
 

Web Link

FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/VA/AFMLOVASS/VASSMD/VA119A14Q0131/listing.html)
 

Document(s)

Attachment
 

File Name: VA119A-14-Q-0131 VA119A-14-PRESOL-0131.docx (https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=991666&FileName=VA119A-14-Q-0131-000.docx)

Link: https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=991666&FileName=VA119A-14-Q-0131-000.docx

 

Note: If links are broken, refer to Point of Contact above or contact the FBO Help Desk at 877-472-3779.
 

Place of Performance

Address: Various Locations in Washington, DC

Zip Code: 20020
 

Record

SN03177510-W 20130908/130906235611-d33756f3ab014fd82ee7c376043b7827 (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

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