SOURCES SOUGHT
R -- SYNCHROTRON ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION FACILITY (SURF) III
- Notice Date
- 12/7/2012
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541330
— Engineering Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Acquisition Management Division, 100 Bureau Drive, Building 301, Room B129, Mail Stop 1640, Gaithersburg, Maryland, 20899-1640, United States
- ZIP Code
- 20899-1640
- Solicitation Number
- AMD-13-SS11
- Archive Date
- 1/5/2013
- Point of Contact
- Lynda M Roark, Phone: 3019753725, Patrick Staines, Phone: (301)975-6335
- E-Mail Address
-
Lynda.Roark@nist.gov, patrick.staines@nist.gov
(Lynda.Roark@nist.gov, patrick.staines@nist.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- This Sources Sought notice is issued for information and planning purposes only. This announcement is NOT a Request for Quotation (RFQ) and does not commit the Government to solicit or award a contract now or in the future. No solicitation is available at this time. The purpose of this notice is to identify sources with the requisite qualifications that could provide the products/services stated herein. All businesses, large and small businesses (8(a), SDB, WOSB, HUBZone, VOSB and SDVOSB) capable of performing the requirement indicated below are encouraged to respond to this notice. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML), Sensor Science Division (SSD) Ultraviolet Radiation Group is seeking vendors who are a capable of providing services to upgrade the existing Synchrotron Ultraviolet Radiation Facility (SURF III) in order to better support the needs of its industrial user base and to maintain NIST in a world leadership position for radiometric standards. NOTE: This is NOT a request for proposal, a promise to contract or a commitment of any kind. The Government will not assume liability for costs incurred by any vendor for presentations, travel, marketing efforts or data offered for examination, therefore, the cost of preparing information in response to this notice is not considered an allowable direct charge to the Government. The overarching goal of the Ultraviolet Radiation Group is to provide the foundation for metrology and testing in the ultraviolet (UV) spectral region of the spectrum. This includes the maintenance and continuous improvement of the national primary standards for UV radiation in support of UV-based science and applications and the development of improved measurement and testing techniques for various scientific and industrial applications involving UV radiation. In order for NIST to remain at the forefront of this very important area of active research, and to be able to compete with growing number of international facilities, the SURF III facility must be upgraded and continually maintained at optimal operation. The synchrotron upgrades will improve NIST's ability to serve the needs of the scientific and industrial communities, as well as benefiting other important research activities at SURF III such as absolute cryogenic radiometry, standard light source development, and NASA and NOAA satellite calibrations. The Contractor shall furnish the necessary personnel and services to complete tasks for the upgrade. The primary cooling system for the NIST synchrotron is a closed-loop, circulating water system that is capable of dissipating more than 100 kW of heat load with a flow rate of 50 gallons/minute. This water cools a high-current magnet, as well as a variety of other high-power subsystems. The high-current magnet is comprised of six pancake coil assemblies electrically connected in series. Because of the high power dissipation in the magnet windings, it is necessary to supply the cooling water in parallel to minimize the temperature rise in the coils. Therefore, leakage currents through the water itself become a major concern because they directly impact the stability of the magnetic field, and hence the usability of the synchrotron for radiometric purposes. In order to reduce the leakage currents, the water is deionized such that its resistivity is higher than 10 MOhm*cm. Unfortunately, because the water comes in direct contact with materials such as copper and brass, the corrosive nature of deionized water results in a loss of material from these critical structures. The Contractor shall implement the recommendations to return the loss rate of material from the high-power structures to acceptable values once authorized by the Government. A monitoring system shall also be employed to evaluate the properties of the cooling system in real time. The precision 1250 A, 200 V magnet power supply used for generating the magnetic field that holds the circulating electron beam in orbit is a microprocessor-based high power system that needs to be 100% reliable so that the facility can run autonomously at night. Unfortunately, it has been found that the unit often experiences fault conditions that prevent its operation. In the past, when the frequency of such disruptions was low, these occasional service interruptions had a minimal impact on operations. However, as the frequency of these events has increased, so has the impact on the operational capabilities. The Contractor shall study the design of the power supply's control system to determine what could cause such problems. Once the problems have been identified, the Contractor shall develop a mitigation strategy in order to overcome the unit's shortcomings. The Contractor shall implement the mitigation strategy once authorized by the Government. The Contractor shall integrate a hardware monitoring system for verification that interfaces directly to the control card of the supply. The Contractor shall be available, as required, in the operations of the SURF III facility by providing the ability to generate beams in accordance with customer needs and requirements. Operational expectations by customers include that SURF III function at a 95% uptime, a value that has historically been the case as determined by an operation log kept by SURF III personnel. The normal hours of operation of the SURF III facility are 08:00 to 20:00 hrs Monday thru Friday, so the Contractor must be available, if needed, to fulfill customer requirements during that timeframe. The Contractor shall also troubleshoot and resolve hardware problems that impact operations in a timely manner (response time measured in hours) as they arise in order to maximize available user beam time. The interface to SURF III's physical hardware has evolved continuously over the years. Legacy systems with dedicated micro-processors are being replaced with more modern computers whose processing speed is more than sufficient to make up for the fact that modern computers inherently multitask. The Contractor shall aid in the upgrade of the SURF III's legacy control system to one that interfaces to the actual machine through more autonomous tributary controls. The Contractor shall aid in the transition to a computer based system by evaluating the present legacy system, and designing and building the necessary interface electronics. Sources that have the ability to provide these services are asked to respond to this notice with a corporate capability statement of a maximum of ten (10) pages to provide a clear and complete narrative of current capabilities to meet the requirements as detailed above. Those sources are requested to respond to this notice and in so doing, provide the following information: organization information to include company name and address, size of business as it relates to NAICS code 541330 (Small Business size standard of $14.0 M), current point of contact (including telephone number, facsimile number and e-mail address), list of current GSA federal supply schedules (if applicable) under which your company can provide the products described in this notice, and a list of contracts within the past three (3) years in which a similar instrument was provided. All responses shall be emailed to Harry.Brubaker@nist.gov so that they are received no later than 5:00 pm EST December 21, 2012. Point of Contact Patrick Staines, Contracting Officer, Email: Patrick.Staines@nist.gov Harry Brubaker III, Contract Specialist, Phone (301) 975-8330, Email: Harry.Brubaker@nist.gov
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