U.S. Department of Commerce, Acquisition Services, 14th & Constitution Ave., N.W., Room 6516, Washington, D.C. 20230

70 -- HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTER SYSTEM FOR WEATHER FORECASTING SOL 52-SANW-8-00001 DUE 110697 POC Julie Hart (202-482-3483) WEB: Class VIII Computing System Acquisition, http://www.ncep.noaa.gov/CONOPS. The Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Weather Services (NWS) contemplates the acquisition of equipment and services to meet its requirement for general purpose, high speed, large capacity computing, data storage, and networking to support numerical weather prediction at its National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) in Suitland, Maryland. This acquisition will be conducted using a new streamlined acquisition process described in a document entitled "Department of Commerce Acquisition Process Case for Change." The document can be found on the Internet (http://www.CONOPS.doc.gov). The intent of this new process is to provide an improved acquisition environment that will benefit both the vendor community and the Government. All market research and solicitation activities will be conducted electronically using the Internet. This acquisition project will be carried out in two phases. Phase I will be a market research effort, initiated by this announcement, to determine the availability of equipment and services to meet the needs of the NWS, as well as the acquisition approach best suited to this project. Phase II, the acquisition phase, will include issuance of a Request for Proposals (RFP), source selection, and award. The RFP will be developed based on the results of Phase I. Now available on the Internet (http://www.ncep.noaa.gov/CONOPS) are two documents: 1) the project agreement which provides the scope of this project and the tentative schedule for the acquisition and 2) the Request for Information (RFI) which contains the ground rules for participating in Phase I. Also included at the NOAA website are a set of initial benchmark codes that will help vendors assess their capabilities. Interested vendors are requested to respond in accordance with the RFI. Previously, NCEP's requirement was announced in the Commerce Business Daily (CBD) on February 4, l997, under "SOURCES SOUGHT -- Solicitation 52-SANW-7-00033." Subsequent to the February announcement, NCEP received numerous industry responses expressing interest in the solicitation. A list of those firms responding to the February 4 announcement is available in the "Interested Parties List" on the NOAA project website. Those firms are encouraged to respond again to this announcement. The "Interested Parties List" will be updated periodically with the names of firms responding to this announcement. Solicitation 52-SANW-7-00033 is superseded by this announcement. The Government will publish another CBD announcement prior to issuance of an RFP (issuance of the RFP is projected for early December 1997). The Government will issue the RFP by posting it on the same website as the project agreement (http://www.ncep.noaa.gov/CONOPS). Anyone interested in the RFP is encouraged to monitor the website for further information. (0289)

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