SOLICITATION NOTICE
A -- RESEARCH ON DRIVING RISK AMONG NOVICE TEENAGE DRIVERS
- Notice Date
- 4/14/2011
- Notice Type
- Presolicitation
- NAICS
- 541712
— Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Biotechnology)
- Contracting Office
- Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Contracts Management Branch, 6100 Executive Blvd., Suite 7A07, MSC7510, Bethesda, Maryland, 20892-7510
- ZIP Code
- 20892-7510
- Solicitation Number
- PS53405
- Archive Date
- 5/31/2011
- Point of Contact
- Janet L. Glazer, Phone: 301-402-6775, Ross Kelley, Phone: 301-435-6960
- E-Mail Address
-
glazerjl@mail.nih.gov, rk17a@nih.gov
(glazerjl@mail.nih.gov, rk17a@nih.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- Purpose of the Announcement: THIS IS A NOTICE OF INTENT, NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL. A SOLICITATION DOCUMENT WILL NOT BE ISSUED AND PROPOSALS WILL NOT BE REQUESTED. The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Branch, Office of Acquisitions intends to negotiate and award on a sole source basis, under the authority of 41 U.S.C. 253(c)(1), as set forth in FAR 6.302-1(a)(2)(ii), a new contract with Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) to continue research on preventing motor vehicle crashes among young drivers. The planned award will enable VTTI to continue this research without delay, advance the work, extend data analyses, and enhance the value of the study to the government and science. The requirements of the contract are: • Recruit a total sample of approximately 100 teenagers and at least one parent of each soon after the teenagers obtain a permit to drive a vehicle with a supervising adult present; • "Instrument" the primary vehicle the participating teenagers will drive with data acquisition systems that include at least the following: accelerometers; global positioning systems; continuously running cameras that can view the front seat occupants, the vehicle cabin, and the forward and rearward roadway; and a computer that can store the data captured; • Collect the following data over an 18-month period from "permit" to 6 months after provisional (independent driving) licensure: amount of supervised practice; routes, locations, and distances traveled; instruction provided by adult supervisors; crashes and near crashes; g-force events; secondary task engagement; and driving performance in complex driving conditions such as when merging or dealing with intersections; • Maintain high quality data collection and subject retention; • Employ standardized procedures within a secure environment to reduce and code the data for analysis; • Analyze teen driving exposure and performance, including skill, judgment, attention, g-force events, and crashes and near crashes; compare teen and parent driving performance; • Compare driving performance among youth from different school districts with varied supervised practice driving experience; • Compare the data to similar data collected by VTTI with other funding; • Store the collected data and maintain its confidentiality. The proposed work would provide new information about important research questions that have implications for behavioral, technical, and policy interventions to reduce crashes among young drivers. The contractor is uniquely qualified by virtue of its continued performance and is the only source that can provide the data for the following reasons: Under the existing contract VTTI has begun recruiting and instrumenting the vehicles of the 100 teenagers and their parents. VTTI developed the technology that is being used for these studies and only VTTI has the capacity for standardized, validated, and confidential data coding and reduction procedures for assessing driving performance, risk, and crash/near crash events. The unique qualifications of the contractor include the following: 1) This research involves the collection of massive amounts of data too large to transfer. The data are stored electronically in a structure built for this purpose at the VTTI with elaborate data security provisions. 2) VTTI is the proprietary owner of the vehicle instrumentation used to collect the data and is uniquely qualified to code, reduce, and analyze the data. 3) VTTI has developed unique, standard coding and data reduction procedures for the naturalistic data collected, including video footage and accelerometer data. 4) VTTI has developed standard training procedures for complex data reduction. 5) The data are highly confidential, given the use of cameras in the vehicle and could not ethically be made available to other researchers before the data were reduced and subject confidentiality could be assured. The data reduction laboratory provides unique data confidentiality procedures. No other contractor can meet all of the following requirements: A. Recruit teenagers and parents for naturalistic studies involving driving data acquisition systems; B. Maintain a cohort of teenage and parent participants over the course of at least 12 months; C. Obtain a supply of at least 100 data acquisition systems for continuous recording of data from at least the following components: accelerometers; global positioning systems; four cameras that can view the drivers', the vehicle cabin and the forward and rearward roadway; audio recording; connection to the vehicles ODP port; and a CPU that can be installed in the vehicle to store the captured data; D. Staffing, training, experience, and quality control for installing driving data acquisition systems in any vehicle within 3 hours; E. Mechanisms and procedures for downloading from vehicles data from driving data acquisition systems; F. Storage capacity of at least 100 terabytes for the naturalistic driving data; and G. Trained and experienced staff and a secure laboratory for coding and reducing large amounts of naturalistic data for use in analyses of crashes and near crashes, g-force event rates, and driving exposure and performance. To obtain the proposed data from a contractor other than VTTI, the government would need to (1) fund a full observational study that would cost millions of dollars and take many years and be highly duplicative; or (2) contract with an offeror that would subcontract with VTTI to provide data collection, coding, reduction and analyses, resulting in much higher costs to the government. While the government has unlimited data rights, it is not feasible for the government to take control of data storage, given its size and security requirements. If another offeror were awarded a contract for this work, they would need to subcontract with VTTI to gain access to the stored data, would need to develop coding, reduction, and analytic procedures that would be duplicative of costs and work already paid for by the existing contract with VTTI and would be redundant, time consuming, and expensive. However, if there are sources who feel they are able to perform the requirement, they may submit, within 30 days of publication of this notice, two (2) copies of a capability statement (no more than five (5) pages), which will be considered by this agency to: Janet Glazer, Contract Specialist, NICHD, CMB, NIH, 6100 Executive Blvd., Suite 7A07, MSC 7510, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-7510 (or overnight/express/courier service: 6100 Executive Blvd., Suite 7A07, MSC 7510, Rockville, MD 20852), plus an electronic copy to glazerjl@mail.nih.gov. The information provided must identify the business status of the organization (i.e. educational institution, non-profit, large business, small business, 8 (a), or other corporate or non-corporate entity). Please limit responses to five (5) pages or less. Any proprietary information should be so marked. A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed requirement based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government, Authority 41 U.S.C. 253(c)(1), as set forth in FAR 6.302-1(a)(2)(ii). No collect calls or facsimile transmissions will be accepted. Contracting Office Address: Contracts Management Branch 6100 Executive Blvd., Suite 7A07, MSC 7510 Bethesda, Maryland 20892-7510 Rockville, MD 20852 (for overnight/express/courier service)
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/HHS/NIH/NICHD/PS53405/listing.html)
- Place of Performance
- Address: United States
- Record
- SN02424674-W 20110416/110414234350-256613946f675e7c643bbd2b52f53890 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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