Cdr, AMC Acquisition Center, Edgewood Branch, Attn: AMSSB-ACC-E, 5183 Blackhawk Road, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD 21010-5424

79 -- ALTERNATIVE CLEANER PERFORMANCE EVALUATION PROGRAM SOL 00-AEC-0001 DUE 061900 POC Point of Contact, Wayne Ziegler, U.S. Army Aberdeen Test Center (ATC), Attn: AMSRL-WM-MD, B4600, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD 21005-5059. Office: 410-306-0746, FAX: 410-306-0806, email: wziegler@arl.mil. E-MAIL: John Hughes, Contract Specialist, john.hughes@emh1.apgea.army.mil. This announcement seeks participation from private industry in the Alternative Cleaner Performance Validation Program. The U.S. Army Environmental Center (USAEC) and the U.S. Army Aberdeen Test Center (ATC) have established the program to facilitate validation and approval of alternative cleaners proposed as substitutes for hazardous solvents currently used in U.S. Army maintenance and repair operations. Success in the program to date includes the establishment of a test protocol developed in cooperation with and endorsed by major commodity commands responsible for approving solvent substitute use on Army materiel items. Background Many federal, state and local laws and regulations limit the use, storage and disposal of hydrocarbon-based cleaning solvents due to their classification as hazardous, toxic, and flammable substances. Unfortunately, the Army and other defense agencies rely on these solvents to maintain unique, mission-critical systems and materiel. Alternative cleaners have the potential to reduce solvent use and provide significant economic benefits. An inherent problem in selecting and using alternative cleaners however is that selection mistakes are often made because many products marketed have a GSA contract number or are listed in DLA catalogs as "environmentally friendlier." Regrettably, although an alternative cleaner may have an environmentally friendlier designation it does not mean that the products' performance has been verified or that it is authorized for military use. In many instances assumptions based on these designations have led purchasing organizations to procure alternative cleaners without realizing the potential impact to soldiers that use them, the materiel items they are used on and ultimately, readiness. Another problem is that many purchasing organizations are unaware of the approval process or that validation is needed before making any significant changes to maintenance procedures or cleaning regimens. As a result the uncontrolled replacement of solvents with environmentally friendly products has resulted in a number of use, approval, and material compatibility issues. Problems such as these have driven the need to better understand performance requirements, establish validation standards, prevent duplication of effort, and facilitate expeditious review and approval of alternative cleaner use where appropriate. Scope: The ultimate objective of the program is to promote approval, adoption, and routine use of environmentally acceptable solvent substitutes. Associated goals of the program include identifying and assessing user needs, fostering active participation and input from private industry, documenting lessons learned, and providing defensible data to commodity approval authorities. Defensible data that meets approval authority reporting requirements is the key factor that will be used to foster approval, usage and procurement decisions. The effort promoted by this announcement shall utilize resources, expertise and funding from both the private and public sectors. Selection Criteria -- The Alternative Cleaner Performance Validation Program requires that potential technologies submitted for verification satisfy certain selection criteria. Alternative cleaners submitted for verification must meet the above focus area, not be detrimental to the environment as compared to hydrocarbon solvents currently being used, have obvious economic benefit, and have pollution prevention qualities that can be tested and presented as valuable verification factors to the commodity approval authorities. Cleaners to be tested should also be commercially ready for implementation, meaning beyond the conceptual stage, and logistically available, maintainable, supportable and reliable. The concept of commercially ready will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and will be dependent on availability for the target user and volume of delivery required by the user. An attractive aspect of the program is that a pre-screening regimen has been developed that will assist private industry participants in determining if it is economically beneficial to proceed with full-scale performance verification. Selecting Technologies for Verification -- Each response to this announcement will be reviewed to determine if the submission meets the above criteria. Candidates for verification testing will be selected based on several factors, including: ability to a pass pre-screening, have demonstrated and documented success in private or private sectors, have a virtually non-existent environmental impact, low economic risks for implementation, realistic potential to meet performance requirements, and practicality of implementation. What's Involved in Verification? This announcement represents the request for participation. All responses will be reviewed regarding their merit. Endorsement of the final test protocol by all relevant commodity approval authorities will be confirmed. Private industry participants will be allowed to submit data from independent laboratories that adheres to reporting requirements and validation methods identified in the program test protocol. The current program test protocol can be found on the USAEC web page at http://aec.army.mil. To locate the program protocol on the USEAC web site go to Technology then Pollution Prevention Technology and then to Alternative Cleaner Performance Validation. It should be noted that the protocol performance requirements and test methods may change at anytime as directed by commodity command approval authorities. However, if any changes are made to the protocol before, during or after testing due notice of those changes shall be given. The ATC will conduct performance verification allowing technology providers to participate as observers on designated occasions. Performance parameters evaluated will focus on, constituent evaluation, material compatibility, and environmental quality benefits reflective of the alternative cleaner. The result of performance verification testing will be a final report that shall be prepared by ATC for private industry participant consumption and the commodity manager approval process. Final reports provided to private industry participants shall be a sanitized version containing the industry participant's data and results only. The version of the final report provided to the commodity commands shall be used to identify solvent substitutes that meet stringent military maintenance, cleaning, service and repair performance requirements and to update or prepare "Qualified Products List (QPLs)." Funding Private industry participants will be required to contribute funds for completion of the verification testing. Under the terms of the program, private industry participants will be required to pay for performance testing of their specific products while government funds will be used to qualify manufacturer/ vendor furnished data, perform test set-up, purchase military unique materials required for testing and conduct performance validation test. Alternative solvent manufacturers will realize significant cost savings under this program due to economies-of-scale and cost sharing. The minimum private industry contribution for verification will be determined by the amount of funds available to support testing, the cost to perform the testing per product, and the number of technology providers participating. What's Involved in Participation? The technology provider is expected to be able to contribute time, materials, and funds to the verification. Specifically, the technology provider should plan to cover the costs and/or labor for the following: attending a "vendor's briefing" to obtain site, program, and fee information; sending the equipment to ATC when required for testing; and assisting with set-up of the equipment (if necessary) for verification testing. Government verification testing will be performed pursuant to a Test Support Agreement executed by ATC with each participating private party. Verification testing will be done by ATC staff at ATC's facilities unless ATC does not have the existing capabilities to do so. In this case, another laboratory having the desired expertise will be used. The ATC is responsible for: maintaining the validation protocol; evaluating and verifying data; conducting the verification testing; preparing a draft report for review and comment by private industry participants and commodity approval authorities; and disseminating the final report and any other related information. The verification process is considered complete when the final report has been provided to commodity approval authorities and decisions have been made regarding acceptable alternative cleaner usage. Meetings with potential private industry participants are scheduled to begin in July of 2000. The meetings will ensure understanding of program objectives, private industry roles and the verification testing scope, including: environmental verification factors, performance and quality verification factors required for approval user implementation decisions, data valuable to technology providers to promote products, and data valuable toend users of the product. For verification testing, the USAEC and ATC will include all interested private industry participants whose products meet the defined requirements and who are willing to provide the fee determined after all responses have been received. Response Format -- A written informational response, not a proposal, is requested. This request for information is designed only to determine those technologies that may be candidates for verification. The USAEC and ATC request that responses consist of a letter indicating interest in participation, which includes the following information (where applicable): name(s), address, phone and fax numbers, and electronic mail of the vendor/technology provider and information on the technology or technologies that the provider wants to included in the verification process. Confidential or proprietary information may be required to be released for government consumption only as necessary to evaluate constituents or to determine a cleaners potential impact on the environment, safety and occupational health. It is recommended that this type of information be kept to a minimum until required to begin validation testing. Why Should You Participate? Participation will help to maximize your marketing resources and will alleviate the need to do product-specific verifications at the direction of each potential user or customer thus saving significant time, money and resources. In addition, a workgroup will be established that will include representation from user, approval authority, and private industry stakeholders. Private industry participants will have the opportunity to provide input to future program direction and protocol development. The public/private partnership seeks to prevent duplication of effort, encourages the acceptance of alternative cleaners where appropriate and helps to identify the most viable markets for technology insertion. The program has an aggressive strategy for information dissemination. Results of the verification will be distributed to all applicable users as deemed appropriate by commodity command approval authorities to increase awareness of technically and commercially viable alternative cleaners (this assures the maximum exposure and visibility of the results of the verification). Although no validated product can be endorsed by the United States government, the Department of Defense or its agencies, completing performance verification testing will enhance the acceptance and use of validated alternative cleaners. This program promotes pollution prevention by providing a viable mechanism to facilitate performance validation of solvent substitutes through active participation from users, private industry and approval authorities. Posted 05/17/00 (W-SN455862). (0138)

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