Loren Data's SAM Daily™

FBO DAILY ISSUE OF JULY 18, 2003 FBO #0596
SOLICITATION NOTICE

66 -- Flow Injection Analysis System

Notice Date

7/16/2003
 

Notice Type

Solicitation Notice
 

Contracting Office

Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Midwest Area National Animal Disease Center, 2300 Dayton Avenue, Ames, IA, 50010
 

ZIP Code

50010
 

Solicitation Number

RFQ5403
 

Response Due

7/28/2003
 

Archive Date

9/1/2003
 

Point of Contact

Denise Hill, Purchasing Agent, Phone 515-663-7243, Fax 515-663-7482,
 

E-Mail Address

dhill@nadc.ars.usda.gov
 

Small Business Set-Aside

Total Small Business
 

Description

This is a combined synopsis/solicitation for commercial items identified below, prepared in accordance with the format in FAR Subpart 12.6 as supplemented with additional information included in this notice. This announcement constitutes the only solicitation: offers are being requested and a written solicitation will not be issued. This solicitation number: RFQ5403, is issued as a Request for Quotation (RFQ). This procurement shall be solicited under the Simplified Acquisition Procedures (SAP) and is a Small- Business Set-Aside. (NOTE: "Nonmanufacturers' Rule" requires that the contractor under a set-aside contract be a small business who must provide either its own product or the product of a domestic small business manufacturer within the United States). The North American Industry Classification System Code (NAICS) code is 334516. The USDA, Agricultural Research Service, National Soil Tilth Laboratory has a requirement to purchase a Flow Injection Analysis System. Please quote EQUAL to the following system: LACHAT Quikchem 8000 Series FIA (#QC8000R2), ASX-400 AutoSampler (#81137), System Unit (#A83106), FIA + Bezel (#31950), RP-100 Reagent Pump, 12 tube (#A82160), Analytical Channel (2 needed) (#A84000), Accessories Kit (#A19008), Operating Manual (#02116), Methods Manual (#LIMETH), Installation, Training, Warranty, Software w/cable (#MN3PC6), Data System with Printer (#A87106), Heating Unit (#A85100), Interference filter (#89520) and Interference Filter (#89660). The items you are offering must meet or exceed the following salient characteristics and minimum specifications for flow injection analysis for inorganic N analyses. OPERATIONAL SPECIFICATIONS:(1)All chemistries on the automated ion analyzer system must operate on the principle of Flow Injection Analysis (FIA). FIA must be used for sample introduction and chemistry determination (2)The flow injection system must provide 5 minute start up, 10 minute changeover, and 5 minute shutdown (3)Samples shall be processed at rates up to 120 samples per hour with baseline resolution to within one percent (1%) of full scale over a dynamic range of two orders of magnitude (4)The FIA software must run under Windows NT 4.0, NT 5.0 (Windows 2000) or Windows 95/98 and must perform simultaneous instrument control, data acquisition and report generation (5)The system must include or be field upgradeable to include the technology of column-suppressed ion chromatography (IC). The IC unit shall operate simultaneously and independently of flow injection analysis (FIA) and share peripheral components including sampler, dilutor, sampling, pump, electronics unit and data station. The IC software shall run under Windows 3.1 or 95/98 and must perform simultaneous instrument control, data acquisition and report generation (6)The system must provide the corrected data in real-time. As soon as the sample is through the detector, the final concentration must be available. INSTRUMENT SPECIFICATIONS: (1)The instrument must be able to run in "manual-mode" without the auto sampler (2)The instrument must be field upgradeable to eight analytical channels. In order to eliminate leak damage, the analytical channels must not be stacked on any other instrument components (3)The flow injection system must use a compact XYZ auto sampler with a minimum of 60 positions for samples and calibration standards. The instrument must be able to rerun calibration standards based on any Quality Control (Check Standard, Duplicate, Spike, Lab Control Sample, etc.) sample's performance. The auto sample must have a built-in wash bath (4)The instrument must be able to be field upgradeable to an optional larger-tray XYZ sampler that also has an optional intelligent auto-dilutor (5)The instrument must allow for the simultaneous use of up to four auto samplers and four auto-dilutors (6)A peristaltic pump must be supplied with a minimum of 12 pump positions. Each chemistry manifold must not use more than five pump tube postions (7)The photometric detectors must operate from 340nm to 880nm. The optics bench must have the option to add a UV-254 detector (8)The system must use solid state photometers for detections with automatic gain and baseline settings. The A/D electronics must have a 20-bit or greater resolution (9)The system must accommodate ion selective electrodes and conductimetric detection (10)The system must use a Pentium PIII-933Mhz or greater microprocessor with 4.2GB hard drive, 256M RAM, CD-ROM, 2 serial ports, 1 parallel port, bus mouse, MS-DOS v6.2, Window 3.1 or Window95, SVGA 17" monitor and HP Deskjet printer. CHEMISTRY SPECIFICATIONS: (1)The chemistry manifolds must not require compressed gas connections (2)The dynamic range for the chemistries may be expandable to three orders of magnitude (3)All chemistry manifold fluidics must be made of an inert fluorocarbon polymer (i.e., PTFE tubing). All fluidic components must be user-accessible from the top of the instrument. Every individual component in the fluidic path must be user-replaceable (chemistry blocks with internal fluidic paths are not acceptable (4)All methods must include linearity, precision, accuracy and method detection limit data. All appropriate environmental chemistries must be formally approved for US EPA compliance monitoring and must have written documentation to demonstrate approval (5)Instrument must be able to perform in-line UV-persulfate digestions for total nitrogen and total phosphorous determinations (6)Instrument must be able to perform in-line digestion and liquid/vapor separation for strong and weak acid cyanide determinations (7)Instrument msut be able to perform in-line phenol matrix clean-up by use of phenol-specific cartridge (8)Instrument must have the capability to measure anionic surfactants (MBAS) using an in-line, dual chloroform extraction procedure. SOFTWARE SPECIFICATIONS: (1)The software must allow the operator to view the calibration curve during the sample and calibration run. The calibration view must update automatically and treat each replicate of each calibration standard independently (2)The software must prepare an independent and non-editable runtime data report for data security. This report must be updated automatically during the run. All reports must report concentration values and the results of all QC samples in real-time (3)The software must be capable of analyzing one or several peaks for each sample injection, and in all other ways to accommodate both flow injection analysis and ion chromatography (4)The software must allow sharing of one auto-sampler by up to four runs at the same time (5)The software must allow the configurations of four auto-samplers at the same time (6)The software must allow the use of computers which have only a USB (Universal Serial Bus) output available; in other words, computers lacking a PCI or ISA buss such as laptops (7)The software architecture must be built on a client-server framework for maximum flexibility and supportability (8)The software's data files' data must be available through an SQL server (9)The software must install all necessary plug and play hardware drivers in a one-step installation available from the vendor (10)The software must automatically store with the data, the method and instrument conditions under which the data was acquired, for later reanalysis (11)The software must automatically estimate the concentrations of off-scale samples and schedule these samples for dilution to bring their concentration with range of the calibration (12)The calibration report must include the percent residual data, and the date and time of analysis for each and all calibration standards (13)The software must allow re-analysis of the calibration curve by deleting one or more calibration data points and must allow the operator to try various calibration fits (14)The software must have a data quality management pan integrated completely with in the run (15)The software must include Data Quality Management with following: QC limits for each QC check standard, both relative and absolute; User-defined QC limits with out-of-range detection and immediate correction prior to any inaccurate data generation for any type of sample; automated QC/QA protocol to monitor accuracy and precision; a selection of types of QC samples, i.e.: blanks, knowns, checks, duplicates, spikes, and spiked duplicates for each sample; and automated calculation of the US EPA's Method Detection Limit (MDL) (16)The software must include the following closed-loop and intelligent data quality management capability. Should any quality control (QC) sample (Check Standard, Duplicate, Spike, Spiked Duplicate, Method Detection Limit, Calibration Standard, Blank, Lab Control Sample, etc.) fail to fall within specifications set by the operator, the software automatically instructs the instrument to perform one of five options: (a) give a message showing how far out of specification the QC is, but continue the run, (b) automatically recalibrate and rerun all samples, (c) automatically recalibrate and rerun all samples after the last quality control set passed, (d) abort the run, (e) offer a menu with choices 1-4 (17)The software must allow report formats to be defined and saved by the customer. The report formatting must be graphically-based. The report must be printable, and exportable in HTML or RTF formats (18)The software must run under Windows NT 4.0, NT 5.0 (Windows 2000), or Windows 95/98 (19)The software must come with a signed certificate of compliance 20.)Software maintenance revisions will be free of charge. SERVICE/SUPPORT SPECIFICATIONS: (1)The system must have a one year warranty on parts and labor. If down time is experienced, a loaner instrument must be provided within a 48 hour period both during and after the warranty period. This excludes the main computer system. The loaner is free during the warranty period (2)Training must be included and will cover the system operation, maintenance and troubleshooting (3)Vendor must provide for installation of instrument (4)Vendor must provide call-backs to telephone service inquiries within 2 hours after call is received. Service hours must at least cover 7:00am to 6:00pm CST (5)All Technical Support and Applications staff must be direct employees of the vendor and must be located at a single location (6)Vendor must have Internet access for all service and support personnel. All documents and software data files must be able to be sent and received electronically through Internet e-mail (7)Vendor must write and distribute a bi-annual customer newsletter that contains updated service and support information (8)All Technical Support personnel must be college-degreed scientists (9)Vendor must have at least three service contract options available. In addition, the service contracts must be customer modifiable to include the following options: customized training, customized instrument validations (10)Vendor must use a networked electronic database to chronologically log customer sales, service and support histories (11)Vendor must have a customer satisfaction measurement program. Upon customer request, vendor must supply results of satisfaction survey (12)Vendor must be ISO 9000 certified. This solicitation incorporates the following FAR clauses, provisions and addendums: 52.211-6 Brand Name or Equal; 52.212-1 Instructions to Offerors-Commercial Item; 52.212-3 Offeror Representations and Certifications-Commercial Items; 52.212-4 Contract Terms and Conditions-Commercial Items; 52.212-5 Contract Terms and Conditions Required to Implement Statutes or Executive Orders-Commercial Items. In Paragraph (B) of 52.212-5, the following apply: 52.203-6, 52.223-9, 52.225-1, 52.225-13 and, 52.232-33. All offerors must include copies of 52.212-3 (Representations and Certifications). Faxed quotations are acceptable to Denise Hill at fax number 1-515-663-7482 on or before July 28, 2003, Central Standard Time. All responses will be evaluated in order to determine the ability to meet the above stated capabilities. The Government shall award a contract resulting from this solicitation to the responsive/responsible offeror whose offer conforming to the solicitation will be most advantageous to the Government per FAR 13.106-2. Responses shall include technical specifications, descriptive material, literature, brochures and other such information corresponding to each minimum required item, which demonstrates the capabilities of the offeror's equipment. Offerors shall identify where the offered item meets or does not meet each of the Government's functional and performance minimum specifications listed herein. Offeror shall include references of three (3) firms for which similar equipment was provided. The anticipated award date is August 29, 2003. All responsible sources may submit a quotation which shall be considered by the Agency.
 

Web Link

Link to FedBizOpps document.
(http://www.eps.gov/spg/USDA/ARS/NADC/RFQ5403/listing.html)
 

Place of Performance

Address: USDA-ARS, National Soil Tilth Laboratory, 2150 Pammel Drive, Ames, Iowa

Zip Code: 50011

Country: USA
 

Record

SN00373513-F 20030718/030716221846 (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

---

| FSG Index  |  This Issue's Index  |  Today's FBO Daily Index Page |