National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Contracts Branch, DERT, P.O. Box 12874, Building 4401, Research Commons, 79 T.W. Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709

A -- NTP TECHNICAL REPORTS PREPARATION SUPPORT SERVICES. SOL NIH-ES-00-21 DUE 020700 POC Saundra J. Walsh, Contract Specialist, 919-541-0419. WEB: none, none. E-MAIL: click here to contact the contracting officer via, walsh@niehs.nih.gov. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is soliciting proposals for the National Toxicology Program (NTP) Technical Reports Preparation Support Services. The Contractor shall serve as a resource to the NTP for the preparation of documents describing toxicology and carcinogenicity studies of selected chemicals. Two principal report series are to be produced. These reports are (1) NTP Technical Reports, which are book-length monographs (approximately 150 to 300 pages), and which provide an overview of the literature on the biologic effects of a particular substance or set of chemicals and full details of the conduct, results, and interpretation of long-term (generally 2-year) NTP studies of the effects of the test chemical in rodents. The subject matters in these reports include toxicology, animal physiology, histologic and clinical pathology, chemistry, genetics, and statistics, and may also on occasion include pharmacology, molecular biology, and other related disciplines. (2) A secondseries, NTP Toxicity Reports, which describe a variety of short-term toxicity studies in rodents. These reports are generally shorter in length (50 to 150 pages) and involve the same subject areas as in (1) the Technical Reports. The contractor shall work in concert with NTP staff scientists and contractors to provided technical writing, copy editing, proofreading, word processing, desktop publishing, graphics, file research, and record keeping services. The contractor shall engage in report preparation activities for approximately 20 to 30 reports in various stages at any one time. Each report will be prepared in a series of five (Technical Report) or four (Toxicity Report) drafts, each incorporating text, materials, and revisions from NTP staff. Each report will be presented for outside peer review at one of the intermediate draft stages; reviews of Technical Reports are conducted in public session. The contractor shall provide sufficient numbers of review draft reports for each draft stage and shall also prepare desktop publishing files for use by the Government and PDF and/or HTML files for display on the NIEHS World Wide Web servers. Approximately 10 Technical Reports and 10 Toxicity Reports shall be presented for review and printed each year; the contractor should expect to commence preparation of approximately two reports per month and to deliver approximately two drafts per week. The Contractor shall archive all materials received, maintain a log of all materials received and delivered, and submit a biweekly status report detailing the status of each report in preparation and the cumulative labor hours spent on each report. All materials sent to the contractor are considered the property of the Government, and upon completion of a report and delivery of the final version and files, the contractor shall return to the Project Officer any of the materials as specified. Each report shall follow a standard format and will contain a cover, various front matter, separate sections for an Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, References, and various Appendixes. Page layout will include text, tables (both embedded in pages of text and multi-page data sets), line art graphics, and photomicrographs with captions. Reports are to be prepared with a desktop publishing package (e.g., QuarkXPress or Adobe Pagemaker) with the capability to incorporate the entire report, including all headings, text, tables, line art images, and photomicrographs, into a single file. The contractor shall be able to produce hard copies, electronic files, and Portable Document (PDF) and/or hypertext machine language (HTML) files of the entire report, or sections thereof, for use by Program. The contractor shall be able to receive and capture electronic files with text, graphics, and tables from a variety of sources, platforms, and programs. Electronic data accessing methods will include reading disks, email attachments (originating both from Macintosh and PV platforms), and World Wide Web sites. These files may be ina variety of formats and programs, including but not limited to Word and WordPerfect (various versions) for text files, Excel spreadsheets, and TIFF, GIF or JPEG files for photographs. The contractor should also be able to read and capture text with citations incorporated in reference libraries (e.g., EndNote). The contractor shall be responsible for ensuring the accuracy of transcription of any electronically converted or hand-keyed text or data. On occasion the contractor may be asked to prepare graphical displays of data (e.g., time plots or bar graphs) or chemical structures and metabolism pathways. These should be prepared as transportable files with programs such as Photoshop for line art, Freehand for graphics, and Chem Draw or ISIS/Draw for chemical structures and not be embedded in a proprietary format. The contractor shall have the capability of scanning line art graphics (e.g., chemistry spectra, schematic diagrams) into electronic files at a resolution of 600-1200 dpi. In the event that photographs (rather than digital files) of photomicrographs are provided, the contractor shall have the capability of scanning the photograph at the original quality and producing a TIFF file at a final resolution of 300 dpi for color images or with gray tones for black and white images. During the report preparation process the contractor shall be able to extract portions or entire sections of the report and send them as electronic files to NTP staff for review. The anticipated effective date of the subsequent award is July 1, 2000. The performance period for the base contract is expected to be 36 months. Should the Government chose to exercise options for continued support, the period shall be extended to June 30, 2008. For estimating purposes the Government anticipates an approximate level-of-effort of 12 person -years per year for the contract and each one-year option. The Government anticipates the participation of a project supervisor, a production supervisor, senior science writers, technical writers/copy editor, desktop publishing specialists and clerical staff. The expected release date of the RFP is December 27, 1999 with proposals due February 7, 2000. Interested organizations should request either a streamlined or full RFP package. If no selection is made, a streamlined version of the RFP will be provided, which includes only the Statement of Work, deliverable and reporting requirements, special requirements and mandatory qualifications, if any, and technical evaluation criteria. After examination of these documents, any organization interested in responding to this RFP must request the entire RFP in writing or by telephone (919) 542-0419 or by FAX request (919) 541-2712. On the release date, a copy of the streamlined version of the solicitation will be available, on the Internet at: http://www.niehs.nih.gov/omcpmb/external/. Those individuals who wish to access the on-line version should follow the instructions provided in the on-line solicitation package. After examination of these documents, any organization interested in responding to this RFP must request the entire RFP in writing or by telephone (919) 541-0419 or by FAX request (919) 541-2712. This requirement is restricted to 100% Small Business competition. See Numbered Note 1. SIC Code 8999. Posted 11/24/99 (W-SN403490). (0328)

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