Dept of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 1315 East-West Hwy., Room 10106, Silver Spring MD, 20910

M -- SOURCES SOUGHT FOR AN A76 COST COMPARISON FOR OPERATION OF NOAA SHIP KA'IMIMOANA SOL 52-SPNA-7-00001 POC R. N. Bennett, Contracting Officer, 301-713-1341; 301-713-1359 (fax). Public notification is hereby made that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is planning to conduct a competition for the operation and support of the NOAA ship KA'IMIMOANA in accordance with OMB Circular No. A-76 (dated August 1983) and the A-76 Revised Supplemental Handbook (dated March 1996). The KA'IMIMOANA's primary mission is to service deep sea current meter moorings, better known as Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) arrays located in the equatorial regions of the Pacific Ocean. These arrays are critical to NOAA's mission to investigate the dominant mechanisms that produce large scale interannual variations of the sea surface temperature in vast regions of the Pacific Ocean. The TAO observing system provides measurements of wind and upper ocean thermal structure, along with observations of currents at selected sites. Maintenance of the arrays requires periodic recovery and redeployment of the moorings to service batteries and replace recording devices. Additional oceanographic and atmospheric data in support of the primary mission are routinely collected by the ship's complement during transits. The scope of the cost competition is expected to be the services, personnel, materials, supplies, provisions, equipment, transportation, supervision, management and some related shore support necessary to operate and maintain the KA'IMIMOANA. The ship is homeported in Honolulu, Hawaii, and is scheduled to operate between 250 and 300 days per year underway. Under the OMB A-76 process, competitive offers from industry will be solicited, evaluated and compared to an estimate of the costs of Government operations, culminating in a decision to award a contract or to continue Government operations. A draft Performance Work Statement is expected to be available for review and comment by potential offerors in mid-February 1997. Current plans include release of a formal Request for Proposals in June 1997, completion of the evaluations by October 1997, and commencement of operations (or cancellation of the solicitation) in February 1998. THIS NOTICE IS NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS. Potential offerors are invited to provide written expressions of interest in such a competition, along with a brief summary of experience and qualifications, to the point of contact identified above. (0270)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0050 19960927\M-0006.SOL)