Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contract Management Directorate (CMD), 3701 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington, VA 22203-1714

A -- SENSOR INTEGRATION AND MODELING FOR BIOLOGICAL AGENT DETECTION SOL 00-17 DUE 051200 POC Dr. Steven Buchsbaum, FAX : (703) 516-7360 WEB: web link for more information, http://www.darpa.mil/baa/#spo. E-MAIL: e-mail link for more information, baa00-17@darpa.mil. Sensor Integration and Modeling for Biological Agent Detection: SOL BAA00-17, proposals due May 12, 2000, POC: Dr. Steven Buchsbaum, Program Manager, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Special Projects Office (SPO), 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, Virginia 22203-1714. Facsimile: (703) 516-7360, E-mail: baa00-17@darpa.mil (e-mail contact preferred). Contractual point of contact: DARPA Contracts Management Office (CMO), Attn: Ms. Kristen Numrych, 3701 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, Virginia 22203-1714. Facsimile: (703) 696-2208; E-mail: knumrych@darpa.mil (e-mail contact preferred).OBJECTIVE: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Special Projects Office (SPO) is soliciting proposals (technical and cost) from qualified corporations, research centers, universities, FFRDCs and DOE laboratories for the Sensor Integration and Modeling for Biological Agent Detection (SIMBAD) program under BAA 00-17. Offerors are free to team with any entity, including Federal and Departmentof Defense Laboratories. If an offeror intends to team with a federal entity, it should include a copy of the teaming arrangement or a signed commitment letter along with a description of the tasks the federal entity will perform and the costs associated with those tasks. Under the SIMBAD program DARPA seeks to develop well-characterized sensor systems for BW and CW agent detection. (BW agent sensors are the primary focus of SIMBAD with CW sensors a secondary focus.) These well-characterized sensor systems may be developed by maturing current and emerging BW and CW sensor technologies or developing new technologies as required. In this context, a sensor system is a complete end-to-end capability of fully integrated technologies capable of monitoring the environment and providing an automated decision output regarding the presence or absence of a threat. As part of producing fully integrated and well-characterized sensor systems, this effort will develop tools and methodologies that result in a significant increase in our understanding of these systems and technologies. This increased understanding will include the ability to produce detailed performance predictions (Detection Probability (Pd), False Alarm Probability (Pfa), Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC), etc.) for a wide range of applications: military and civilian; domestic and foreign; and indoors and outdoors. DARPA believes this expertise and understanding can be achieved through the formation of multi-disciplinary teams, or consortia, consisting of such disciplines as biology, chemistry, medicine, mathematics, physics, fluid dynamics, computational science, and engineering, including systems engineering. We seek a comprehensive effort to develop, model, validate and optimize the performance of current and emerging sensor technologies in order to produce new sensor systems that provide an extension of our capabilities to standards of performance and understanding which far exceed the current state of the art for CW and BW sensors. ACQUISITION INFORMATION: Performance under this BAA will take place under three separate Work Areas. Work Area 1 is designed to support the primary SIMBAD program thrust of Work Area 2. Work Area 2 will be the dominant focus of the SIMBAD program. Performers may bid either Work Area 1, Work Area 2 or both Work Areas 1 and 2. Work Area 3 provides a short-duration opportunity for limited funding to organizations that did not bid under either Work Area 1 or Work Area 2, but have the potential to contribute to teams in Work Area 2. Work Area 3 will allow these organizations the opportunity to execute work necessary to make the value of their potential contributions apparent to teams funded under Work Area 2. Under Work Area 1, performers will model and validate (or empirically characterize) the threat, threat fate and transport, environment and other key factors that impact sensor performance (e.g. temporal and spatial distributions of the threat). This analysis will be provided to performers under Work Area 2 and should directly support an evaluation of detection performance for a system of BW and CW sensors. Work Area 2 is the dominant focus of the SIMBAD program. Work Area 2 is structured into two separate Task Elements: 1) Development of the SIMBAD Program Plan. 2) Development, modeling and validation of BW and CW sensor systems. Work Area 3 provides an opportunity for organizations to execute a limited scope, short-duration task in parallel to Phase I of Work Area 2 to help facilitate additional teaming prior to downselecting the teams that will continue into Work Area 2, Phase II. Work Area 3 performers must define a task that exemplifies their potential contribution to SIMBAD Work Area 2. This task will result in a final report and final briefing that must be delivered to DARPA and to at least one of the selected Work Area 2, Phase I, performers no later than 6 months after contract award. DARPA requires that all parties interested in participating in this BAA register their organization by providing a principal point of contact, phone number, fax and email to baa00-17@darpa.mil with the SUBJECT LINE: SIMBAD POC INFORMATION. Unless specifically requested otherwise, a listing of all registered organizations and point of contact information will be provided to all that register. In order to facilitate discussions related to teaming, DARPA requests each organization interested in participating in this BAA provide a brief statement of interest and capabilities, not to exceed two pages. Instructions for providing the statement of interest will be provided to each registered point of contact. This statement of interest, along with the contact information will be posted to a password-protected DARPA website. Each potential bidder who provides both contact information and a statement of interest and capabilities will be provided password-controlled access to this website. In addition to providing an electronic forum to encourage teaming, DARPA will host a bidders' conference. The conference will take place on Monday, April 10, 2000, at the Hilton Crystal City at National Airport, 2399 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, VA 22202, (703) 418-6800. During the bidders' conference, DARPA will provide an opportunity for potential bidders to brief their capabilities and areas of interest to other conference participants. Bidders must register for the conference by sending an e-mail (with the subject line "BIDDERS' CONFERENCE," providing the name of the organization, and including all attendees) to baa00-17@darpa.mil no later than Wednesday, April 5, 2000. In this e-mail, bidders must request an opportunity to provide a briefing, if so desired. Additional instructions will be provided to those who register for the conference. Within the meaning of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) at 6.102 and 35.016, this announcement and the Proposer Information Pamphlet (PIP) constitute DARPA's solicitation for this BAA. Evaluations of all proposals will be accomplished through a scientific review of each proposal considering the following general criteria, which are listed in descending order of relative importance: (Note: Criteria (3) only applies to the evaluation of proposals submitted for Work Area 2): (1) the offeror's ability to execute the work in a manner that meets or exceeds the DARPA SIMBAD program goals and objectives defined in the PIP, as evidenced by the offeror's proposed Program Plan; (2) overall scientific merit and technical approach; (3) the scope of the technology encompassed; (4) offeror's capabilities, past performance and related experience; and (5) proposed cost and cost realism. Specific criteria for each proposal category can be found in the PIP. Multiple awards are anticipated for the SIMBAD program. As a result of this BAA, DARPA may award traditional FAR/DFARS type contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, and/or Other Transaction Agreements. No portion of the BAA will be set aside for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) or minority institution (MI) participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete orseverable areas of research for exclusive competition among the entries. PROPOSAL SUBMISSION: Proposers must obtain the BAA 00-17 Proposer Information Pamphlet (PIP) which provides further technical and administrative detail for this BAA including the technologies of interest, evaluation criteria, funding processes, and formats of abstracts and proposals. Proposals not meeting the specified format described in the PIP will not be considered for award. The PIP is not classified and may be obtained via the World Wide Web (WWW) at http://www.darpa.mil/baa/#spo. Questions regarding this BAA or comments on the PIP may be sent to baa00-17@darpa.mil. A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) compilation will be posted on-line and periodically updated. The FAQ will also be found at http://www.darpa.mil/baa/#spo. It is anticipated that contracts will be awarded beginning in May 2000. A table of important dates and milestones is provided in the PIP. The Government shall not be liable for the cost of proposal preparation and submission. Proposals shall be submitted in accordance with this announcement and the PIP. There will be no other solicitation issued in regard to this requirement. Offerors should be alert for any BAA amendments that may be published. ORGANIZATIONAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST: Each cost proposal shall contain a section satisfying the following requirements: Awards made under this BAA are subject to the provisions of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 9.5, Organizational Conflict of Interest. All offerors and proposed subcontractors must affirmatively state whether they are supporting any DARPA technical office(s) through an active contract or subcontract. All affirmations must state which office(s) the offeror supports and identify the prime contract number. Affirmations shall be furnished at the time of proposal submission and the existence or potential existence of organizational conflicts of interest, as that term is defined in FAR 9.501, must be disclosed. This disclosure shall include a description of the action the offeror has taken, or proposes to take to avoid, neutralize or mitigate such conflict. If the offeror believes that no such conflict exists, then it shall so state in this section. It is the policy of DARPA to treat all proposals as competitive information, and to disclose the contents only for the purposes of evaluation. The Government intends to use non-Government personnel as special resources to assist with the logistics of administering the proposal evaluation and providing selected technical assistance related to proposal evaluation. Support personnel are restricted by their contracts from disclosing proposal information for any purpose. Contractor personnel are required to sign Organizational Conflict of Interest Non-Disclosure Agreements. By submission of its proposal, each offeror agrees that proposal information may be disclosed to those selected contractors for the limited purpose stated above. Any information not intended for limited release to support contractors must be clearly marked and segregated from other submitted proposal material. DARPA is seeking participation from the widest number of offerors. SPONSOR: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Contracts Management Office (CMO), 3701 N. Fairfax Dr., Arlington, VA 22203-1714. Posted 03/22/00 (W-SN437182). (0082)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0009 20000324\A-0009.SOL)