SOLICITATION NOTICE
B -- Maintenance of Existing Light OMS Equipment
- Notice Date
- 3/28/2012
- Notice Type
- Fair Opportunity / Limited Sources Justification
- NAICS
- 334511
— Search, Detection, Navigation, Guidance, Aeronautical, and Nautical System and Instrument Manufacturing
- Contracting Office
- U.S. Forest Service, Contracting, Owyhee Building - MS 1100, 3833 S. Development Avenue, Boise, Idaho, 83705-5354, United States
- ZIP Code
- 83705-5354
- Solicitation Number
- AG-024B-S-12-0005
- Archive Date
- 4/27/2012
- Point of Contact
- Robert M. Hoffman, Phone: (208) 387-5681, Christopher D. Kirk, Phone: 208-387-5665
- E-Mail Address
-
rhoffman@fs.fed.us, ckirk@fs.fed.us
(rhoffman@fs.fed.us, ckirk@fs.fed.us)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Award Number
- TBD
- Award Date
- 4/9/2012
- Description
- The Forest Service intends to purchase and install up to 20 Operational Loads Monitoring Systems (OLMS) on Government-owned aircraft involved in aerial firefighting. This equipment monitors and determines operational loads experienced within the low level fire suppression environment. The OLMS is comprised of all equipment required for recording to acquire, record, and transmit required parameters experienced by a firefighting aircraft during flight operations. Currently, the Forest Service has 31 systems which were purchased from Appareo Systems under a previous contract. These systems were certified and had been installed by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Field Approval or Supplemental Type Certificates (STC) in aircraft. These systems collect detailed flight data which is written to a Secure Digital (SD) card in the Appareo manufactured GAU 2000. The GAU 2000 is DO-160 certified and has been installed by FAA Field Approval or supplemental type certificate (STC) in aircraft. This approval is mandatory for all equipment installed on Forest Service owned or contracted aircraft. The operation of this system is as follows: After a mission has been flown and the aircraft lands, the SD card is removed from the GAU 2000 and processed by an Appareo developed file transfer program. This program performs initial quality checks of the flight data and sends it to the Appareo data processing server via the internet. The server then parses the data, performs additional quality assurance of the data and creates a gps file for the Appareo Alerts application and a file in the.s3t format is posted to the Forest Service library database hosted by nCode International. The data supplied through this chain has to maintain quality and represent the flight that was flown. This data is used by the Forest Service through an interagency agreement with the FAA and their center for excellence at Wichita State University (WSU). WSU has created a software application to process the data collected from the Appareo OLMS. Currently, the library holds over 15,000 flight hours. Once processed, WSU creates an Operational Loads report for the specific special mission profile (Large Air tanker, Smokejumper, Lead plane, etc.) which is then published by the FAA through the grant funded by the Forest Service. Once published, these reports document the aerodynamic loads experienced by firefighting aircraft. These reports can then be used to formulate appropriate maintenance and inspection programs for these aircraft ensuring their safe operation and averting catastrophic structural failures. Due to the proprietary nature of the equipment and software developed and installed by Appareo Systems, they are the only source able to service and maintain these systems. Appareo's continued support of these systems and the data collected is critical to assuring that the data gathered is valid. Replacing the existing OLMS with a system from a different manufacturer would invalidate the 15,000 hours of flight data previously collected and would not guarantee that future data would correlate to the previously collected data.
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/USDA/FS/024B/AG-024B-S-12-0005/listing.html)
- Record
- SN02707848-W 20120330/120328235406-282c5c69d20cae26a44b44000cd2e0db (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)
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