SOURCES SOUGHT
B -- Water Utility O&M Study - Appendix 3 - Schedule of Deliverables
- Notice Date
- 8/11/2015
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 221310
— Water Supply and Irrigation Systems
- Contracting Office
- Department of Health and Human Services, Indian Health Service, DHHS/IHS/ Division of Engineering Services, 2201 6th Avenue, Mail Stop RX-24, Seattle, Washington, 98121
- ZIP Code
- 98121
- Solicitation Number
- 15-102-SOL-00020
- Archive Date
- 9/30/2015
- Point of Contact
- John W Fannon, Phone: 2066152753, Paul J. Reed, Phone: 2066152504
- E-Mail Address
-
john.fannon@ihs.gov, Paul.Reed@ihs.gov
(john.fannon@ihs.gov, Paul.Reed@ihs.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- Appendix 2 Appendix 1 Schedule of Deliverables Appendix 3 This is a Sources Sought/Pre-solicitation notice. The solicitation will be available on or around 9/15/2015, on www.fbo.gov, under this solicitation number: 15-102-SOL-00020. The information from this Sources Sought/Pre-solicitation notice will be used to gain knowledge of potential qualified sources and their size Classifications: Small Business Set-Asides, Small Disadvantage Business, 8(a), Women-Owned Small Business, Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business, Small Business Indian Economic Enterprise, HubZone, and Large Business. It will determine the acquisition strategy to be used for this requirement. In accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation 5.205, Indian Health Services is conducting a Sources Sought/Pre-solicitation notice to complete a national assessment of the costs associated with operating and maintaining drinking water and wastewater disposal utilities owned and operated by American Indians (AI) and Alaska Native Villages ANV). This is not a solicitation announcement for proposals, and no contract will be awarded from this notice or any follow-up information requests. In order to protect the procurement integrity of any future procurement, if any, that may arise from this notice, information regarding the technical point of contact will not be given and no appointments for presentations will be made. IHS is seeking to identify potential sources for an upcoming stand-alone, firm-fixed price contract. After review of the response to this sources sought announcement, a solicitation announcement may be published in Federal Business Opportunities (FBO). The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code is 221310. (Size standard of $27.5 million average annual receipts for preceding three fiscal years). THIS ANNOUNCEMENT IS NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL. It is a market research tool being used to determine the availability and adequacy of potential sources prior to determining the acquisition strategy. The Government is not obligated to and will not pay for any information received from potential sources as a result of this announcement. It is requested that the interested sources submit to the Contracting Officer a brief capabilities statement package (no more than 5 pages in length, single spaced, 12 point font minimum) demonstrating ability to perform the services described below. The written response to this notice should consist of the following items: a. Company Name. b. Company DUNS number. c. Company point of contact, mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and website address d. Name, telephone number, and e-mail address of a company point of contact who has the authority and knowledge to clarify responses with government representative's e. Date submitted. f. Type of Company (i.e., small business, 8(a), woman owned, veteran owned, etc.) As validated via the System for Award Management (SAM). All respondents should register on the SAM located at https://www.sam.gov/portal/SAM/#1 I. PURPOSE: The purpose of this work is to complete a national assessment of the costs associated with operating and maintaining drinking water and wastewater disposal utilities owned and operated by American Indians (AI) and Alaska Native Villages (ANV). The work will also serve to document the best practices associated with adequately funded AI and ANV utilities for sharing with other tribal utilities. The results of this effort will be used to raise awareness of the optimum O&M costs and recommended practices on a national level associated with tribal water and wastewater utilities. Additionally, the results will be considered for use by federal agencies with a goal of increasing the sustainable operations of these facilities. II. TASK DETAIL: Background Understanding operational and maintenance costs are an important step in understanding the financial capacity of tribal utilities. The ability of a tribal utility to provide safe and reliable drinking water and waste water disposal services, with proper operations and maintenance, can have an impact on the health of the individuals they serve. In Fiscal Year 2014, 11.4% of the population served by community water systems in Indian country did not receive water that met all EPA applicable health-based drinking water standards. Overall, 7.5% of the U.S. population served by community water systems did not receive water that met all EPA applicable health-based drinking water standards. One of the reasons hypothesized as to why tribal drinking water systems have trouble meeting drinking water standards is the lack of technical, managerial and financial capacity to properly operate and maintain the system. As a result of that hypothesis, an Infrastructure Task Force formed a work group to determine how to evaluate tribal operation and maintenance costs. This evaluation effort is a result of that working group. The evaluation concept was developed based on the July 8, 2014 Drinking Water and Wastewater Utilities: Recommended Approach to Assessing Operations and Maintenance Costs at Tribal Utilities Project Cost Proposal & Oversight: If a solicitation is issued; the activities described in this scope of work will be scheduled to be completed over two years. The contract would consist of a Base Award and an Option CLIN. The Option CLIN would be unilaterally exercised by the Government. The Contractor's proposal shall consist of a base proposal and one option. The proposal shall be broken down fifty (50) percent of the study to be completed in the award and fifty (50) in the preceding option. The proposal shall include a lump sums for all: (a) labor, material and equipment (b) provide a list of deliverables, with due dates and schedule for deliverables. This also includes at a minimum monthly (1 time per month) telephone conferences between the Contracting Officer, COR and Contractor's Project Manager, each approximating 1 hour in duration. The monthly meeting is to coordinate any issues and confirm task performance. The contractor shall submit monthly progress reports. Overview of Work: A summary of the task is included in Table 1 and the expected work completion time is included in Section III. The estimated sample size for the analysis to be completed in this project has been designed to estimate the differences between adequately funded tribal utilities and other tribal utilities with a precision target of ±20 percent, with 90 percent confidence. The table below summarizes the work to be completed under the IHS contracts. Table 1: Task Summary Task Task Description Sub Tasks 1 Validate Inventory of Tribal Utilities ANV-1 2 Data Gathering Format Review ANV-2 3 Identifying Adequately Funded Utilities ANV-3 4 Adequately Funded Benchmark Development & Best Practices Summary ANV-4 5 Sampling & Data Gathering AI-5/ANV-5 6 Data Analysis AI-6/ANV-6 7 Final Report AI-7/ANV-7 Task 1 - Validate Inventory of Tribal Utilities: The Contracting Officer will provide the Contractor a list of AI and ANV utilities with their assigned water and/or wastewater system(s). The Contractor shall coordinate the review of the AI and ANV utilities for accuracy and completeness through the points of contact provided by Contracting Officer. The Contractor will maintain the updated inventory master list. Currently there are an estimated 338 AI utilities and 158 ANV utilities. Deliverable: Task AI/ANV-1.0 Validated inventory tribal utilities Task 2 - Data Gathering Format Review: The data to be collected under this work is expected to fall within the four general categories described here: i. Utility Information: Utility information shall include utility ownership (to confirm ownership as AI, ANV, Federal, etc.), contact information, utility population, total number of connections, and the geographic area of the homes served by the utility. Geographic area is required to be collected to provide a general indication of the extent to which the distance between drinking water and wastewater systems within the utility's jurisdiction could affect driving time requirements for utility staff. The utility information also includes the number of drinking water and wastewater systems operated by the utility and, for each system, the population and number of connections, the source type (drinking water), treatment type (wastewater), and if septic systems are used whether they are maintained by the homeowner or utility. This information is required to determine the number and general characteristics of the systems the utility's O&M budget must cover. ii. Financial Information: The financial information required to be collected shall focus on total O&M costs. Where details on costs for specific items such as energy costs (including energy audits), water or wastewater treatment chemical costs, administrative costs, etc. is readily available these details should be collected. The key financial information necessary to compare utilities will be the utility's budget which should include expenses and revenue for a given year. The Contractor in coordination with IHS (for ANV this will be the State of Alaska and ANTHC) will request a copy of the O&M budget from the tribe. The supporting documentation on expenses and revenue shall be collected; as it will be useful during the quality assurance review and to help resolve questions about the data that may arise during analysis. The utility information shall include an indication of whether there is an operating budget, the time period covered by the operating budget, how often it is reviewed or updated, the data used to update the budget, whether it is actively followed by the utility, and if it covers multiple drinking water and/or wastewater systems. This information will help inform how well the budget information reflects actual expenditures. Information shall include the total budget for the utility (in dollars) and the year in which the budget applies. If the utility has the budget separated by drinking water and wastewater systems, that information shall be included. The percentage of the budget assigned to labor expenses is required. Actual expenses are required for the utility as a whole and also by individual drinking water and/or wastewater system(s). The year that the expenses were incurred is required --- to verify whether it coincides with the budget year. Actual expenses are expected to indicate whether the budget was reasonable. Finally, revenue information is required as budgeted revenue and actual revenue from previous fiscal years. Revenue details shall include percent of revenues generated by residential and commercial fees. Like expenditure information, the revenue information should be for the same budget year. The revenue information is required for the utility as a whole and also by individual drinking water and/or wastewater system(s). Revenue sources (residential user fees, federal funding direct, and/or tribal funds (e.g., enterprise funds)), residential user fee rates (water, wastewater, or combined), and the percent of user fees that are collected, if user fees apply, are also required. After the financial data is collected it shall be adjusted to a standard year, such as January 2015 dollars, to accurately compare between utilities. iii. Staffing Information: Information that shall be gathered includes: the title of each individual working for the utility, whether they are a staff member or contractor, and the full-time equivalent number or the number of hours per day (or week, month, etc.) they spend on operations and maintenance at the utility. iv. Drinking Water and Wastewater Assets: Information on major infrastructure assets shall be collected as well as the asset's capacity (or length, depending on the asset). Major assets include wells, intakes, spring collectors, treatment plants (drinking water and wastewater), water storage tanks, pumps stations, lift stations, water mains (transmission/distribution), sewer mains (collection/force), lagoons, septic tanks, emergency generators, and meters. Units of measure are standardized for each asset type and include gallons per minute (gpm), gallons (gal), feet (ft), miles, acres, and kilowatts (kW). The utilities should be asked to provide an overall condition of the assets by identifying their condition as good, fair, and poor. Information on infrastructure assets that are pending or are in construction but are not reflected in the O&M budget shall not be collected. This is because the O&M budget is expected to address activities and costs related to existing infrastructure. Capital project costs, such as installation of a new well or rehabilitation of a storage tank, are not included as O&M costs unless they are funded by the utility's O&M budget and no other sources of revenue. Appendix 1 (See attached): of this scope of work contains examples of asset attributes to be included in an asset inventory pilot being completed by IHS. Appendix 2 (See attached) is an example of an asset collection form used by ANTHC. Appendix 3 (See attached) is an example data collection form develop as part of the Assessment Report. The Contractor shall examine the information included in Appendix 1 and 2 and make a recommendation to amend the form included in Appendix 3 as needed. Deliverable: Task AI/ANV-2.0 Recommended changes to data collection forms Task 3 - Identifying Adequately Funded Utilities: The Contractor will deliver a webinar training session on the characteristics of adequately funded utilities and on the type of data to be collected to make this assessment based on the outcome of Task 2. This training shall describe the factors to be considered when assessing if a utility is adequately funded such as: an O&M budget that includes expenses and revenue for staff and materials sufficient to carry out the operations, finance and managerial tasks necessary to ensure a high level of service. The training should include the need to consider the utility's regulatory compliance record (health based and monitoring and reporting violations), frequency of budget review and update, adherence to budget, level of revenue collections and employment of operators certified at an appropriate level for the utility's infrastructure. Following this training for AI utilities, the Contractor will be provide a list of candidate adequately funded utilities. This list will not exceed 24 AI utilities. The Contractor shall complete an assessment of the utilities provided and recommend which utilities asset and financial information should be compiled. In addition, the same information will be collected from the AI utilities that are reported to serve over 14,000 people of which there are estimated to be seven. The Contractor will assist with the AI utility interviews and follow-up necessary for obtaining asset, cost and budget documents from these utilities. Data will be derived from a variety of sources including: existing sanitary surveys, inspection reports, inventories from the 2011 Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey, previous infrastructure funding applications and other available asset inventory data. For the ANV utilities, a list of 16 adequately funded utilities, with the associated asset and financial data will be provided to the Contractor. No additional work shall be required by the Contractor in gathering this information. The Contactor shall archive data in a working database for analysis. The Contractor will develop an Excel file in a format established by IHS. To the extent possible, the Contractor shall leverage existing OMDS data created by the IHS under the STARS asset inventory pilot. These Excel files will include data from the following asset types: water mains, water supply wells, water booster pumps, water storage tanks, sewer mains, sewer manholes, sewer lift stations and sewer lagoons. (See Appendix 2). The Contractor shall apply quality control techniques to identify any errors and/or anomalies in the AI and ANV data. The upload of data to the IHS OMDS system or any necessary changes to IHS OMDS system (to accept the data) are not included under this Statement of Work. Any funding or effort needed for the OMDS system is outside of this contract and is an IHS responsibility. Deliverables: Task AI /ANV-3.0 Training Session: Identifying adequately funded utilities Task AI-3.1 Recommended AI adequately funded utilities Task AI-3.2 Assistance with AI adequately funded utility data compilation Task AI/ANV-3.3 Adequately funded data ready for analysis Table 2: Example of ANV Utility Data Groupings: Type of Drinking Water System Type of Wastewater System Pressure Gravity Circulating Gravity Pressure or Circulating Vacuum Haul Haul Table 3: Example of AI Utility Data Groupings: Type of Utility Population Served Drinking Water and Wastewater <3,300 3,301-14,000 >14,000 Drinking Water or Wastewater <3,300 3,301-14,000 >14,000 Task 4 -Adequately Funded Benchmark Development & Best Practices Summary: The Contractor shall analyze the AI and ANV data gathered under Task 3 to identify and develop benchmark O&M costs. When developing the recommended benchmarks the Contractor should examine the data as a whole and in groups. One example of AI and ANV utilities groups is described in Tables 2 and 3. Other groups could be based on source water type, geographic location, number, type or size of utility assets. The Contractor shall examine and recommend ways to link the collected asset information and other utility characteristics with the O&M finance information when developing cost bench marks. Prior to finalizing the cost benchmarks the Contractor shall assess the validated inventory and data set collected representing the adequately funded utilities and recommend an AI and ANV utility grouping that will allow the results to be characterized using a maximum number of characteristics without significantly increasing the data collection effort beyond a sample sizes of 90 utilities for ANV and 104 utilities for AI. The grouping shall include sample sizes for each recommended stratum to achieve the statistical precession and confidence targets referenced in the Overview of Work. The Contractor shall assume the sample size needed for completion of the work to be 90 utilities for ANV and 104 utilities for AI. If the Contractor determines in order to enhance the findings of this effort alternative data groups beyond those provided in Tables 2 and 3 are possible and as a result additional utilities are needed to maintain the statistical precession and confidence the Contractor will notify the Contracting Officer and discuss the additional scope requirements. Any work beyond the 90 utilities for ANV and 104 utilities for AI will not be authorized until there is approval by the Contracting Officer on the additional level of effort needed. An additional benchmark shall be the amount of revenue collected divided by the median household income for the communities served by the utility derived from the US Census and expressed as a percent. Following approval of the recommended groupings by IHS the Contractor will develop the benchmarks for use in comparing the cost data to be gathered under Task 5. The Contractor will also prepare a summary of the best practices observed in the adequately funded tribal utilities. This information will be used by the federal agencies to highlight how other utilities could model their operations to help improve their operational sustainability. Deliverables: Task AI/ANV-4.0 Recommended AI and ANV data grouping and sample size Task AI/ANV-4.1 Recommended adequately funded AI and ANV O&M benchmark cost Task AI/ANV-4.2 Best practices summary AI and ANV utilities. Task 5 - Sampling & Data Gathering The Contractor shall create two sample cohorts (AI and ANV utilities). These cohorts will be sized based on the sample size requirements identified under AI/ANV 4.0. The Contractor shall conduct a webinar training session on the type of data to be collected and how to populate the data collection form. Asset and financial data shall l be gathered at utilities included in the cohorts utilizing the same methodology and sources as under Task 3. Interviews shall be completed with each sampled AI utility to clarify understanding of the complied information and to gather additional asset and financial data necessary to better characterize the utility's O&M costs and asset inventory. The Contractor shall coordinate the interviews and any follow-up actions needed to complete the data collection through the contact list provided by the Contracting Officer. No interviews and limited follow-up assistance shall be provided by the Contractor to verify the data compiled for the ANV utilities. The collected AI and ANV utility data shall be included in the same Excel file format developed under Task 3. Similar to Task 3, to the extent possible, the Contractor shall leverage existing OMDS data upload files from the IHS STARS asset inventory pilot. The Contractor shall apply quality control techniques to identify any error and/or anomalies in the AI and ANV data. Deliverable: Task AI/ANV-5.0 Sample cohort identification Task AI/ANV-5.1 Asset and financial data collection training webinar Task AI-5.2 Interview coordination and data collection follow-up Task AI/ANV-5.3 Data in working database ready for analysis Task 6 - Data Analysis: The Contractor shall complete a comparative analysis of the data included in the working database under Tasks 3, 4 and 5. This analysis will include calculating the differences between the established adequately funded O&M cost benchmarks at AI and ANV utilities with the O&M costs from similar utilities included in the statistical sample. Depending on the response rate from the sampled utilities the Contractor will establish sample weights applied to the calculated cost differences to adjust the impact the results of utilities in the sample set have on the overall universe of utilities or select a similar replacement utility if statistically appropriate. The Contractor shall be responsible for determining the amount of revenue collected from residential user fees annually divided by the annual median household income for the service area of the utility (as derived from the American Community Survey)and express the result as a percentage. The percentages shall be compared to the benchmarks developed under Task 4. The Contractor shall analyze the data to identify specific best practices that could be applied at other utilities In those cases, the Contractor shall provide an estimate of the range of O&M cost "savings" that could be realized as a result of best practice implementation across applicable AI and ANV utilities. The Contractor shall document the assumptions and limitations associated with each of the data analysis completed under this task. Task AI/ANV-6.0 O&M cost comparative analysis adjusted for response rate Task AI/ANV-6.1 Utility revenue % MHI Task AI/ANV-6.2 Recommended best practices cost savings analysis Task 7: Final Report: The Contractor shall summarize the information gathered under this effort into a final report that will contain an executive summary, project's purpose, approach, limitations, summary of findings and a description of the finding impacts. The report shall summarize the financial health of AI and ANV utilities. The final report shall include a section that describes the best practices of the adequately funded utilities. As applicable, this section should also include a discussion regarding specific best practices that could be promoted to decrease O&M cost at ANV and/or AI utilities. The estimated O&M cost savings shall be based on the data collected under this analysis or be derived from other published work. The results for the AI and ANV shall l be provided in separate final reports. Each of these reports (excluding appendices) shall be no longer than 25 pages each. The Contractor will submit a draft for review and comments. The Contractor will address the review comments received on the draft and incorporate changes into the final report submission. Task AI/ANV-7.0 Draft Final Report Task AI/ANV-7.1 Final Report III. SCHEDULE OF DELIVERABLES: See attached Schedule of Deliverables: V. Miscellaneous: Software Application Files and Accessibility Software Application files, delivered to the Government, shall conform to the requirements relating to accessibility as detailed to the 1998 amendments to the Rehabilitation Act, particularly, but not limited to, § 1194.21 Software applications and operating systems and § 1194.22 Web-based intranet and internet information and applications. See: http://www.section508.gov/ Preferred text format: MS Word, 14.0 or higher (Office 2013 or higher) Preferred graphics format: Each graphic is an individual GIF file Preferred portable format: Adobe Acrobat, version 6.0 Preferred Excel Format: Version 14.0 or higher Disclaimer and Important Notes: Election to submit or not submit a brief capabilities statement package will NOT disqualify an offeror from submitting a proposal once the solicitation has been issued. Important Notice: It should be clearly understood that this Sources Sought/Pre-solicitation notice is not an award or commitment by the Government. The offeror is further advised that funding may not become available. If funds are not available, no award will be made. The offeror will not be reimbursed for any/all effort or submission preparation costs. Responses to this sources sought are requested no later than August 25, 2015. Address your submission as follows: 15-102-SOL-00020 Sources Sought/Pre-solicitation notice Attn: John Fannon (Contract Specialist) IHS Division of Engineering Services - Seattle 701 5th Street Suite 1600, Mail Stop RX-24 Seattle, WA 98104 john.fannon@ihs.gov All offeror's are advised that registration in the Systems for Award Management (SAM) database is required prior to award of a contract. Failure to register in the SAM database may render your firm ineligible for award. For more information, check the SAM Website at http://www.sam.gov. Completion of the electronic annual representations and certifications are also mandatory prior to the award of a contract. Contracting Office Address: Indian Health Service, Divisioni of Engineering Services- Seattle 701 5th Avenue, Suite 1600, Mail Stop RX-24 Seattle, Washington 98104
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