S05 - QA (American Sign Language Service).pdf

DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS VHA Network Contracting Office 19 Rocky Mountain Acquisition Center 6162 South Willow Drive, Suite 300

Greenwood Village, CO 80111

CONTRACTOR Q&A’s

American Sign Language Services

Q&A No 1: While preparing our RFQ response we feel that the requirement of 5 years’ experience is unnecessarily restrictive and counterproductive to a wide competitive field and best value to the government. All ASL interpreters are NAD/RID certified regardless if they have five months or five years’ experience. It’ll be difficult to achieve both. Once they meet the NAD/RID certification standards their length of experience is superseded by their achieving the standards rather than their length of time interpreting. We respectfully request that the solicitation be amended removing the requirement for five years’ experience.

Answer: The request is respectfully accepted. The 5-year experience requirement was intended to be representative of each interpreter’s cumulative interpreting experience, not post certification experience. Our subject matter expert concurs that 5-years’ experience post certification is unnecessary and will be removed. However, the vendor is still required to submit proof of certification (NAD/RID or BEI) for each interpreter that provides services.