xEVAS Preproposal Conference QandA.pdf

xEVAS Pre-Proposal Conference Questions and Answers

1. Can NASA explain the responsibilities of the Contractor Medical Operations as compared to the NASA Medical Authority?

Answer: Contractor Medical Operations are responsible for providing medical monitoring, tools, and interventions to assure the safety of NASA crewmembers during suit development. The NASA Medical Authority is the NASA physician assigned to the crew and has final say in all medical decisions, for example if the NASA Surgeon says there’s a medical contingency and may call an all stop to the activity.

2. After Award, is the contractor required to bid on all task orders offered by the Government?

Does the contractor have the option to no-bid task order?

Answer: The terms and conditions do not preclude Offerors from submitting a no-bid for competitive task orders; however, Offerors are reminded that this procurement could result in a single award in which the selected offeror will be required to perform all requirements within the contract scope.

3. The Request for Proposal (RFP) cover letter (first paragraph) mentions performing a "successful demonstration in a relevant environment". Is any environment other than an Extravehicular Activity (EVA) on ISS or Lunar Surface considered relevant (i.e. Neutral Buoyance Laboratory [NBL], Thermal Vacuum test, etc.)? This is with respect to the 1A/2A Demonstrations.

Answer: Demonstration (Milestone 7) for CLINs #A are expected to be completed in a space EVA environment. Host vehicle and gravity environment do not have to match the services task order host vehicle and gravity environment. Relevant ground-based testing in the NBL and thermal vacuum chambers is expected in support of Analog Demonstration and Design Certification Review (DCR) Milestone 5.

4. I may have misheard, but I thought I heard the speaker say key personnel was not being evaluated, but the chart said that aspects of key personnel were evaluated in the Program Management Plan. Can you please clarify?

Answer: The Offeror’s approach to Key Personnel is evaluated as part of the Program Management Plan (see DRD xEVAS-PM-01). The actual key personnel past performance and resume is not being evaluated.

5. For Government Furnished Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) assets, can the contractor request additional quantities beyond those listed in L.11 through the Government Task Agreement (GTA) process? Are there limitations to the quantities that the contractor can request and are Class I and Class III allowed and are they costed by NASA?

Answer: The only property that is available as Government-Furnished Property is the property (and quantities) listed in Provision L.11, List of Available Government Property, xEVAS Pre-Proposal Conference Questions and Answers of the solicitation. Any other requests for use of Government resources must be coordinated as a GTA request through the designated Partnership Office Points of Contact (see Attachment L-07, NASA Center Partnership Office Points of Contact). Per the solicitation instructions, all GTAs shall be submitted with the proposal and any associated costs will be included in the total evaluated price.

6. The Human Lander System (HLS) Option A contract has the xEVA interface line in a different spot than what is specified in the xEVAS Final RFP. Can NASA please clarify its intent?

Answer: The HLS Option A award is currently in litigation before the US Court of Federal Claims. NASA recognizes the gap for VISE and may update requirements for HLS following resolution of the litigation.