U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 26 W. Martin Luther King Dr., Cincinnati, OH 45268

A -- TECHNICAL SUPPORT FOR THE NERL QUALITY ASSURANCE PROGRAM SOL C6SS01 DUE 093096 POC Mike Hennessey 513-366-2032 The USEPA is interested in determining the availability of potential contractors to provide support to the quality assurance program of the National Environmental Researcl Laboratory (NERL). This potential requirement would be to enable NERL to meet its mission of assuring the validity of analytical data produced for the Agency to perform its mission of improving the quality of the environment. Performance evaluation studies are required to support the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Federal Insecticides, Fungicides, and Rodenticides Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Compensation and Liability Act (as amended by Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act), and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. NERL is responsible for: Selection and standardization of analytical methods and provision of quality assurance support for EPA program offices, including Office of Water, Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, and Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances; Characterization of methods in terms of inter-laboratory precision, bias, and sensitivity through formal inter-laboratory method validation studies and inter-laboratory method detection limit studies to determine if methods should be approved as official Agency methods; Conducting performance evaluation (PE) studies, as required by the Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water, for certification of laboratories to ensure safe drinking water for the nation; Conducting PE studies for compliance monitoring for major dischargers; Providing PE samples of solid and hazardous waste materials for laboratories performing analyses for the Agency; and, Providing quality control samples and calibration standards for use as independent checks on calibration, analyst techniques, and instrumentation to supplement laboratory internal quality control programs. In support of these EPA efforts, the contractor shall: 1) obtain materials for and produce, analyze, store and distribute chemical and biological quality control (QC) samples and calibration materials, chemical and biological performance evaluation samples, and samples to be used for inter-laboratory method validation studies (IMVS) ; 2) receive data from various PE and IMVS and review for completeness; 3) analyze samples to confirm their identities, purities, stabilities, and concentrations. The contractor will be required to have the laboratory equipment and storage facilities for performance of the requirements of the contract. Interested parties for this potential requirement should submit an expression of interest with a statement of qualifications not to exceed five pages. To be considered, responses must be received no later than 9/30/96. (0253)

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