FINAL TRANSCRIPT.pdf

202-234-4433 Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH (NIH)

NIH EVENTS MANAGEMENT AND RELATED

TECHNICAL SERVICES

PRE-PROPOSAL CONFERENCE

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS (RFP) NO. NIH0D2010243

WEDNESDAY,

NOVEMBER 10, 2010

The pre-proposal conference met in

Balcony B of the Natcher Conference Center at the National Institutes of Health, 9000

Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Maryland, at 10:00 a.m., Ken Ryland, Events Management Branch

Chief, presiding.

PRESENT:

KEN RYLAND, Events Management Branch Chief

ERIN FLYNN, Pacifico, Contracting Officer

MARIANNE BACHMANN, Project Officer

T-A-B-L-E O-F C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S

PAGE

I. Introduction by Contracting 3

Officer: Erin Flynn, Pacifico

II. Overview of Performance Work 10

Statement: Marianne Bachmann, Project Officer

III. Overview of ORS-Controlled 14

Conference Facilities:

Ken Ryland, Events Management

Branch Chief

IV. Facility Tour: Ken Ryland 26

V. Optional Tour of ORS-Controlled 56

Conference Facilities

VI. Return to Building 45 128

P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

10:07 a.m.

MS. FLYNN: Can everyone hear me okay? Okay.

Good morning. This is the pre-proposal conference for events management and related technical services, which is RFP

Number NIHOD2010243.

My name is Erin Flynn, Pacifico.

I am the Contract Specialist on the requirement, and I am here today with Marianne

Bachmann, who is the Project Officer and Ken

Ryland, who is the Events Management Branch

Chief.

Based on the magnitude and level of complexity of the questions that we received in advance, we are not going to be able to respond to all of the questions today.

However, answers to the questions received will be published to the Federal Business

Opportunities website, which I will refer to as FBO, and an amendment to the solicitation.

The website is up there. I think you are all familiar with it, www.fedbizopps.gov.

Since we haven't had an opportunity to formulate answers to the questions already submitted, we won't be taking questions about the solicitation today, but we do ask you to submit questions in writing to me at flynne1@od.nih.gov, which is the e-mail address that is on the FBO website under the solicitation.

The deadline for those additional questions is Monday, November 15th at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. We really want to make sure that we keep that deadline -- it is very important, for those additional questions so that we have a chance to review them and respond and clarify any aspects of the solicitation, if necessary, and move the process forward.

There is a sign-in sheet located over at the table. If anyone hasn't signed in, we ask that you do so at this time. We do have a Court Reporter here today. So the sign-in sheet, as well as a transcript of the pre-proposal conference, will be posted in an amendment to the solicitation on the FBO website.

And I just want to remind you that it is the responsibility of offerors to monitor that FBO website for amendments and notices.

Also, what I did want to state was that we do have a tour of facilities that is taking place after the conference that is in this room, and you will have an opportunity to ask basic questions about those facilities as we enter those rooms.

As you know, the current deadline for the proposals is November 23rd at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. But I did want to let you know that the government does anticipate extending that deadline for receipt of proposals. That deadline date -- the revised deadline date will be posted to FBO and in the amendment.

I also wanted to remind you that this procurement is 100 percent small business set-aside, which means if there is a prime-sub relationship for the offeror, the small business, the prime needs to do at least 50 percent of the cost of labor. And in terms of delivery of proposals, this sometimes is an issue, so I am asking you that you please refer to the RFP letter that was posted to

FBO, as well as Attachment 3.

As you know, proposals are delivered to my attention, but I am not housed here on the NIH main campus. I am up on

Executive Boulevard. So you need to pay attention to the fact that if you are hand-delivering those proposals, or you are using a courier or Federal Express or UPS, the proposals are sent to the Rockville, Maryland address, and the Bethesda, Maryland address is really used for the United States Postal

Service.

If you were using the U.S. Postal

Service's express mail, and it was sent to the

Bethesda, Maryland address, it is going to take an additional three to five business days to reach me. And when proposals are late, they're late.

Also, the contract will be for, as stated in the solicitation, a base year of 12 months and four 12-month option periods. As stated in Section I, in the appropriate clause, preliminary notice is sent to the contractor about 60 days in advance to let them know the government's intent on whether or not we are going to exercise the option.

Just an overview of some of the areas of the RFP that I want you to take note

of. Section B.2 of the RFP identifies the line items in the pricing schedule that are fixed price and those that are requirements-type line items. The fixed price line items are fixed monthly amounts, while the requirements-type line items are estimated quantities.

Section B.3, the pricing schedule, when you are filling out the pricing schedule each line item requires a dollar amount and total. You will need to provide a dollar amount and total for line items 1A through 1D, and line items 2A through 2D.

However, when you are calculating your estimated not-to-exceed amounts, for the base year and each option year, you will be applying line items 1D and 2D to the ceiling amount, not 1A through 1C and 2A through 2C.

There is a footnote in the pricing schedule that discusses this. I just want you to kind of refresh your memory when you are filling out your pricing schedule that you are noting that.

Section H, Special Contract

Requirements, the security deliverables are discussed in this section, and the required insurance that the contractor must have at the time of award. A certificate of insurance evidencing the required coverage is due three days after award, and the requirements that are discussed in Section H are also listed in

F.2. It kind of gives you an itemized schedule of that.

Section L and M, very important sections of the RFP. Section L provides guidance on what to include in your proposal.

Please read the technical and business proposals instructions carefully and use the charts and formats provided. Section M provides the weights assigned to each of the evaluation factors, so that you are aware of what is being emphasized.

Regarding past performance -- I just wanted to make this note as well -- it states in Section M that offerors' past performance will be evaluated after completion of the technical evaluation, and that only offers determined to be technically acceptable will be evaluated.

However, it is really -- you must turn in your past performance information as outlined in Section L with your original submission. We are not asking for past performance after the initial technical evaluation. So I just wanted to make that very, very clear.

And now I will go ahead and turn the podium over to Marianne.

MS. BACHMANN: Good morning, everyone. My name is Marianne Bachmann. I am going to be the Project Officer on this solicitation.

I am just briefly reviewing the requirements, the major requirements, as it says, "Provide comprehensive approach to delivering the services per Section C.5."

That is broken down into conditions of performance, and that states the services to be provided. And the second section is -- of each section there is quality and timeliness standards, and they state the acceptable quality levels for each item identified.

Workload indicators, very important. They provide an estimated count of the stated indicators. Most importantly, they represent the baseline against which the actual count will be compared. So we continuously collect data and will compare to the stated amount in the performance work statement.

Going to the next slide, expected outcome of contractor efforts. Just to stress again, successful execution of all events involves scheduling and planning, AV support, setup and cleanliness, timeliness, and communication. And it is all stated in

Section C.5 in detail.

Performance-based contract -- this is a performance-based contract. Incentive and deductions will apply starting Option 1.

And we increased the amount from -- we never had quite this high amount, so it is a real good incentive to work intelligently and diligently to provide the services described in the PWS.

Expected outcome of contractor efforts continues -- the government will measure. It is all detailed in Section

C.5.1.4.2. It is the quality assurance plan.

Main strokes, it consists of customer surveys, direct observations of events, and third party

-- we use a third party for the cleaning assessment on a quarterly basis.

And this is done by the Quality

Assurance Specialist in my office, and she is here today. I just want to introduce her.

Jennifer Wilkinson is the Quality Assurance

Specialist and Quality Control Officer for the

Division of Medical Arts, of which NIH Events

Management is part of.

We want to maximize utilization of the space and services. It is extremely important that NIH Events Management finds a way to use the available space efficiently by really planning carefully with the events requirements, the event meeting planners, and we anticipate, with the current facilities that we have, still probably an annual increase of about three percent.

We can't -- we don't have a crystal ball. We don't know what is going to happen. But we had increases over the past four or five years of anywhere three to five percent every year. So we expect the trend to continue at least for two years. We don't want to make a prediction farther out.

NIH Events Management outlook --for this, I would like to introduce Ken

Ryland, who is the NIH Events Management

Branch Chief, and intimately knowledgeable and involved in the day-to-day operation of NIH

Events Management.

MR. RYLAND: Thank you. Thank you, Marianne. Again, welcome to the National

Institutes of Health, Natcher Auditorium. We appreciate all of you coming, and we are very excited about the number of people that have turned out here.

This is a very important contract for the NIH, as you can see by the number of meetings that take place. We are a very busy organization, and we are in a state of transition. There is a lot going on here. As all of you are familiar with going on with

Congress and with the most recent elections, budgets are tight, money is tight, and we are in older facilities that are primarily analog, and we are in the process of trying to convert to digital.

We are shifting the emphasis from rooms, because rooms are going to be changing.

We've got new facilities opening, we've got facilities closing, we've got rooms opening and rooms closing. There is a lot of construction that is going on. We have the new Porter Building that is getting ready to open in 2012. We will have a conference center in there, approximately 300 people.

We have a lot of lease agreements that are in negotiations right now. Cancer is building a new facility up at Shady Grove, which will have a conference center, which we may or may not be operating for them. We are working that out right now. We are in discussions with them.

So we are basing the contract on the number of events, not specific rooms, because, you know, there are a list of rooms that we have, and those are the ones we currently have, but they will be changing.

And a lot of these facilities hopefully will be getting upgrades.

This year I can tell you we have money in our budget, which hasn't been approved yet, so it is all subject to change, but currently in the budget that has been approved by the NIH powers-that-be we have monies to upgrade Lipsett, and we have monies to upgrade a room in Building 1, Conference

Room 151. As far as any other upgrades, Natcher is one of the ones that desperately needs it. That is in discussion, and we are trying to come up with funding models and a way to do that. But none of that has been approved yet.

We are transitioning, as I mentioned, the cancer facility that is getting ready to open. We are working with NIAID right now. We are actually managing their conference rooms for them. This may be the model of the future. Maybe ORS, the Office of

Research Services, won't own the conference rooms, as we do now. We will just manage them for ICs. So this is probably what will be taking place.

With the Cancer Institute, as I said, they are building a facility up in the

Johns Hopkins Research Park off of Shady Grove

Road. They will have a conference center there. So GSA is building the building. NCI will be the tenant, and the conference facility is going to be NCI. So we are working with them. Hopefully, we will be the one to manage it for them.

So we see that as the process of the future. The institutes and centers are getting larger. They are having their own conference facilities. There still will be the centrally managed conference facilities, but we see this as an area that we can expand into.

The conversion from analog to digital -- I mentioned we are in aging facilities. We have tried, as best we can, with the financing that has been given to us through the NIH budgets to keep the facilities updated, and to keep them functioning properly. For the most part, they are.

Today all of them are functioning as best as we can with the equipment that we have, but we definitely want to move into the digital realm, HD. We want to be able to provide better services. We do a lot of webcasting. We have an excellent team that prepares these and videotapes the events that go on, and then we distribute them.

The ICs are moving more to work.

Their staff is going to be work at home or, if you have been following a lot of the federal government initiatives, green initiatives, staff will be working at home. Staff not only work on the campus, but NIH has campuses in

North Carolina and also at Rocky Mountain

Labs. So we need to be virtual. We need to make those people that are not here on campus feel like they are part of the team, and we do this through the webcasting and we use video extensively to do that.

There will be disruptions to operation during these renovations. We will

-- whoever the contractor is going to be, we value that contractor in helping us with the planning and design of these new facilities.

Marianne and I are only two people. I am not an engineer. I have an idea of where we should be going. I try and stay up to date on what is going on in the fields of television and AV support and conferences.

But we look to the contractor to bring expertise to that, their engineering staff, to help us. You are the end user. You are the ones that are going to be using these facilities. We need your information and input as to what is the best designs to support the meetings and events that we do.

We do a wide variety of events, everything from Presidential visits all the way down to two or three people meeting to discuss, you know, whatever it is that an IC might have.

These are the facilities that we currently have that are under the centrally managed events management operation. We are under the NIH Office of the Director. We are part of the Office of Research Services, which our director is Dr. Alfred Johnson. And we are under the Division of Medical Arts, and we are the Events Management Branch. I know that is a long list of where we sit in the organization.

Our largest facility is the

Natcher Conference Center, which you are sitting in now. This is one of the balconies.

We have three -- A, B, C. There is a main auditorium. These rooms can be divided, as they are now, or opened up into a 1,000-seat auditorium. We also have breakout rooms downstairs, A through J. So it is a very large facility. It gets used for a lot of the big events.

We have had everything from the

H1N1 Flu Summit here, and we had Governors from all over the country, we had the

Secretary here. President Obama called in from Italy while he was on his trip to speak at that event. So there is a lot of different

AV requirements that go into a lot of these --the big events.

Building 31 is another conference center, which we will be seeing today.

Building 31 is primarily the IC, directors oriented, a lot of advisory meetings. We do a lot of the new employees come for orientation, but more specific to -- those events are more specific to the IC and administrative.

Buildings 35, 40, 49, 50, 60, basically these are lab buildings, science.

Most of the lectures are scientific in nature.

Building 1 is -- I'll use the word "reserved," but it is kind of on hold for the NIH Director to use. We have Conference Room 151 where all of the IC directors get together and met. And then, we have Wilson Hall, which is another auditorium for press conferences, IC director meetings, big events. But we reserve that primarily for the NIH Director.

Building 10 is the -- we have two centers. The new center is the Hatfield

Center. The older center is the Magnuson.

The Hatfield Center can -- the -- what is it, 200-bed hospital is housed there. NIH has a beautiful setup where the labs are very close to the patient bedside, and that is one of the reasons for a lot of the success with the research that goes on here. There is very close proximity, and that is mainly housed in the Hatfield Center.

The Magnuson Center is the older building. We have our large conference rooms in there. I don't know if you remember the old Marcus Welby Show. Lipsett Auditorium has the raked auditorium, a lot of scientific lectures. One of our most popular venues, it turns over almost hourly with the number of events that go on there. Most of our events are approximately about an hour, an hour and

15 minutes, the lecture series. And that is primarily what goes on in there.

Masur Auditorium, a 500-seat auditorium, recently renovated. It does have

HD cameras. It is -- has HD projection, so it is one of our most recent upgrades. We have been very pleased with that facility.

We also have some breakout rooms, 2C-116. Our television operations center is also housed there. It was built almost 15 years ago. So it is still analog, but it has held up over the years and still performs under a lot of stress.

Our edit suites are also located in there. We have a television studio, and our video staff -- the government staff is housed there.

The Hatfield Center, we have three rooms. They are basically smaller rooms, kind of like breakout rooms. They are used more for informal lab meetings.

These are our offsite facilities.

We will not be visiting those today. Just so you know, conference rooms are conference rooms, but will give you a broad overview today of one of the facilities we are going to look at and those rooms -- the specifics of the rooms, those rooms, are listed in the --what is it, TE-1. So you can look at their sizes and their breakouts and things.

Rockledge, Executive Boulevard, and Fishers Lane, we have 6001 Executive

Boulevard, which is the neuroscience center, and then 6130, which is Executive Plaza North.

As I mentioned, the NIAID rooms, this is relatively new to the -- to us and to the contract. We are in a partnership. We are kind of feeling this out. We just started this this year, and we are working with them.

They want to -- as you all well know, conference services/events management is a logistical nightmare.

While the ICs don't really want to mess with it, it has been dumped on a lot of the IC staff, and they are looking for us to help. Why reinvent the wheel? We do this every day. We do a lot of events annually, and they look to us for support. So this is our first attempt at this and working with them. And, as I said, it is kind of a feeling out process. Hopefully, it will be a success, and we can present that to NCI when they move into their facility.

There is a note here. Four-month utilization will be provided through an amendment. Erin mentioned that.

And as far as questions today --

Erin didn't mention -- we would like to limit the questions to the facilities and the tour.

If you have specific questions about the facilities, equipment, lighting, storage rooms, things like that, I will be happy to answer those.

To get into the contract-specific questions, we really would appreciate those in writing and submit them to Erin. I will do my best to answer the facility questions. If I can't answer them, we will get back to you with those, and we will put those in with the amendment.

All right. So that concludes the formal part of the presentation. We have a few buses that are going to be out front. We are going to first tour through the Natcher

Conference Center, and then we have two buses that will take those of you that would like to see the facilities, we will drive by some, we will go into a couple, and, as I said, I will take questions about the facilities then. All right?

Again, thank you all. We appreciate you coming out this morning.

(Applause)

(Whereupon, at 10:30 a.m., the formal portion of the meeting was concluded, and after a brief break the tour of the facilities was started.)

MR. RYLAND: Let's gather over here. This is the first floor atrium space.

It is utilized for a number of different purposes. Right now you will see posters set

up. We do everything from poster sessions to roundtable sit-down dinner. We have had as many as 300 sitting in here, in the balconies and out here. So it gets a variety of uses, but its primary function is a pre-function area for the balconies.

We are going to proceed down this flight of steps over here on the left. We will go downstairs where the majority of the conference rooms and breakout facilities are located.

Any questions about up here?

(No response)

Okay. If anyone needs an elevator, it is on the far end to the right.

We will now go to the lower level of the atrium. Again, it is pre-function for the rooms that are down here. You can see today we have got quite a number of different setups. We have 10D registration. We have catering going on. This is pretty typical for what goes on down here.

Pre-function area here in front of the main auditorium, you see the tables are set up. That is pretty standard. The catering is day to day. With a lot of the rules and regulations, food is diminishing, but it is still an integral part of what goes on here. We don't do any of the catering. We have pre-approved caterer lists.

The contractor typically works with the IC representative. They will tell them what caterer they want to use, and we coordinate with them to make sure they clean up their mess and take their trash with them.

We do have housekeeping staff here that do some of that, but you want to make sure, in coordinating with them, that they take care of their responsibility. We have had caterers in the past dump coffee grounds down the sink and clog them up and, you know, we really want to make sure that doesn't happen. It is very expensive to repair those things.

Behind you is the Ruth Kirstein

Main Auditorium. In its current configuration, it is 500 seats. The balconies each and the divided seat 100. When they are opened up, we can seat an additional 500 people in the balcony. We have a total capacity of 1,000 people in the main auditorium.

We are going to proceed in there next. And as you go through the doors, you can take a look on the right. I call it the bat cave, but it is the main control room on this level. The upstairs level has the video;

downstairs is primarily audio and routing.

If you want to walk in there and take pictures, you are more than welcome. If you want to take a picture, feel free. That's fine.

Is everybody in? Okay. Right now we are looking at the main control room for the Natcher Conference Center. All of the rooms can be individually run or they can be centrally run back here. And everything is connected, so that we can route video and audio signals from any of the rooms from here back to our television operations center.

This is Janet. Good morning, Janet.

JANET: Hi.

MR. RYLAND: Janet is one of our government videographers. We have a couple on staff. As with any organization, there are day-to-day ups and downs. The government people typically take the majority of the events. Any of the overflow is contracted out and goes through this contract.

So freelancers are hired. I think today we have two events going on. There is about I think six or seven or eight contractors working today with those events.

We have our government producer working with them. There are two remote events that are off campus.

And Janet is setting up. What are you shooting today, Janet?

JANET: It's Alaska-Native Indian.

MR. RYLAND: It's the Alaskan-

Native American -- I guess this is Native

American Heritage Month, so this is one of the events that is going on here on the NIH campus.

Let's go down to the front, show you the podium. This particular room has rear projection. We have one of the new Sony high definition projectors. We do a variety of events in here. We have the podium up here that has current configuration with several computers on board. We have a monitor. The presenter can either control, or it can be controlled from the control room by an AV tech.

We have lighting for television, not the greatest. Typically, we bring in lighting for major events. We have a single camera, like Janet is setting up, but we also have a robotic HD system that is an NE cast system. We use robotic cameras. We can set up four cameras or six cameras in here, and that is typically what we do for a major event that we are televising.

We have fiber optic cables between our main conference facilities back to our television operations center. That is on campus. Off campus we use video teleconferencing or other distribution vehicles to get the signals back to the television operations center.

Once we get the signal back to the television operations center, which you will see a little later on, then we can manipulate it, we can add captioning, we can distribute it, we can report it. But you will see that in a short while.

Any questions about the auditorium or the balconies? If you look behind you, that blue drape, there is a moveable wall that we can open up. The flooring that I was standing on where the podium is located is removed. It is actually on scaffolding.

That gets removed, and there are chairs that get put in there to increase that capacity from 100 to 500. Each room is 100, so right now the capacity is 300. In its open configuration, there is an additional 200 seats, and that is where they go. That scaffolding gets removed, those floor joists get removed, and then the seats go in.

No questions?

(No response)

If you do have a question, if you could come state your name in the microphone

-- or just state your question in the microphone, and then we can respond to that.

All right. We do have a --currently, the control system is a Crestron control system. The majority of our other facilities are AMX. As I said, Natcher is one of the facilities that we are trying to get renovated. We have been working for six years now to get financing -- or to get funds to do that. We have not been successful, but the

NIH powers-that-be recognize that it needs to be done, and we are in the progress of hopefully getting some funds to begin that process.

I am going to take you in the back, show you the rear projection room. Are you the end of the line? We've got a couple more back there. Have we got everybody?

Well, you get a good representation of the equipment. It used to be just slide projectors. We graduated to the bar code projector, and then now we have the nice Sony. The Sony was installed -- I think it was about two years ago. It is a high definition projector. We have done high definition projections with it, video mainly.

So one of the questions I know was about storage. We do have storage. You can see there is some storage in here. There is a -- actually, down the hall is a housekeeping storage area. It is a room. There is also some -- scattered around the facility some storage rooms. We have storage. It is limited.

In some facilities we have more than others. In the new facilities we have planned for additional storage. There are a lot of tables and chairs and things for setup.

So when we go to the back hallway, you will see that they are stored back there.

There is additional seats that go into the balconies that are also stored in that hallway. It is not plentiful, but right now it is adequate. Any questions about the main auditorium?

MR. MANN: Do you still use the slide projectors?

MR. RYLAND: No. I haven't seen us use a slide projector in -- but we keep them on hand. The scientists were wed to them years ago. They would carry those carousel around and drop them, and slides would all come out and they would be feverishly putting them back in. You should have seen them trying to transport them on airplanes.

I think we were successful in moving them to PowerPoint.

(Laughter)

There was a real resistance. I cannot tell you, some of the older scientists, they probably still have them handy if they need them. But everybody has moved to the new technology.

What I can tell you is we get scientists from all over the world. And

Microsoft Office looks wonderful in English, but in Chinese I will guarantee you that I can't figure out which button to push. So we do have presenters that come in, Nobel Prize winners, and the AV techs.

Not that they have to know

Chinese, but they have to have a really good understanding and be able to bring up presentations. And we get all kinds of formats and different types of -- different computer software that is used.

For the most part it is standard.

We don't run into too many problems. But there are occasional problems, and it is best to kind of -- to support that -- the events.

They need to be able to quickly either move that presentation onto one of our computers or get it up.

We try and ask scientists to give them in advance. A lot of these presentations are not published, so they are not very willing to give them up. You typically will not see them until 10 to 15 minutes prior, if you are lucky. A lot of the times they will walk in five minutes before.

Fortunately, with facilities like this one and Masur Auditorium, we can hook up several laptops. We have several laptops built in. There is two in the podium. There is two in the back. So we can load the presentations on a number of computers. If we have a problem, we can switch to another one.

So we do have backups and options.

MR. CROW: Ernie Crow. This is kind of specific, but do you do Mac and PC support?

MR. RYLAND: Yes. Yes, we have

Mac and PC, in our large conference facilities, not in all of them. NIH, probably not too different from the private sector, administrative staff, all PCs; lab, scientific staff, Macs. It has gotten much better, the integration between the two. We had tremendous problems early on with video that, you know, something wouldn't play on the Macs but would play on the PCs, and vice versa.

Currently, we use real video, which I know is antiquated, for webcasting.

We are putting pressure on our Center for

Information Technology, CIT, to move to a flash and H.264, so that we can get better resolution and we get better quality. They haven't gotten there yet, so we are using an outside contractor to do some of the webcasting to meet those needs.

But, yes, Mac and PCs, we do use them both. The scientists come in with both.

So you have to be familiar with both.

MR. VATURO: George Vaturo. What restrictions do you have on flash drives, CDs, outside presentations? How do you manage all of that?

MR. RYLAND: There are restrictions. I cannot give you all of them.

The IT staff has all of the government requirements. They are not -- NIH has tighter requirements, some of them, than the federal government. But there are -- I can tell you there are restrictions on thumb drives and outside devices. They don't want any viruses or anything getting loaded into the system.

I can tell you that guest presenters and visitors don't get access to the network. Basically, the computer systems and those kind of things, we can load the presentations on there. A lot of the times we'll ask them to e-mail them to us, because, as I said, we don't get them in a timely fashion.

I can't go into those details, but

I would be happy to provide them if they are not in the contract somewhere.

MR. MANN: Charles Mann. I noticed when you did your presentation in the room you used a table mic for your -- on your

Lavalier. Is there a wireless concern in the building?

MR. RYLAND: No. There aren't any wireless concerns. We do have wireless microphones. We don't have a lot of them.

Typically -- and this is my personal thing --wireless is wonderful, you have mobility, but inherently there is more problems, batteries that wear out, interference.

I don't know how many of you know the spectrum for that is shrinking. A lot of that spectrum space, because these wireless microphones don't have a dedicated license --like NIH, we don't have license for our wireless microphone spectrum space. That the

FCC has given away a lot of that space to telecommunications, so there is a real fight going on with that.

And it is not just us, it's -- the fight is really being taken on like with the

NFL and major sports networks, because they are going to hotels and things, and they are competing with spectrum, with businesses and establishments that are in that city.

We don't have too much of a problem. It is probably more of a problem in the hospital when you are dealing with the medical equipment there. But I don't know of any issues right now with the microphones that we use. They are pretty -- we keep them in the conference rooms. We are not out mobile with them. So, to my knowledge right now, not much problem with them, and we do use them as requested.

MR. COMER: Donnie Comer. You use them basically -- the commercial spectrum, you are not using any government spectrum for your microphones?

MR. RYLAND: That is correct. We buy -- just for an example, not that Sure is the only one we use, but we will buy like a

Sure wireless microphone. It is just commercial off the shelf. We are not using any federal government reserve space.

MR. VATURO: George Vaturo. Are your buildings Wi-Fi'd, if people have internet connection? Are they limited network opportunities?

MR. RYLAND: The conference facilities are considered public space, and as such the Center for Information Technology, CIT, which is the NIH entity that maintains that, has installed a wireless network.

Now, the wireless network is available to all government employees, and it is password protected and encrypted and all of that, so that they can get into it. On limited occasion, guest accounts can be set up for presenters or for visiting dignitaries.

When the Secretary comes here, those kind of things, we will set up guest accounts. When the President was here, we set up guest accounts for all of the media, because they had to stay in touch, and they used the wireless network.

There is a lot of communication between our organization and CIT when these major events take place to coordinate that.

We don't give them out willy-nilly.

A lot of the new configurations require the guest, or whoever is coming, to have access to put software on their computer, and a lot of people don't. A lot of the government staff aren't allowed to put software on their computers. CIT and IT people in those ICs reserve that right, and they limit -- I can't like load software onto my computer. We used to be able to do that.

I used to be able to bring in a thumb drive.

Now I can't. You know, those things have all been restricted because of the viruses and things that go on.

So hopefully I answered the question. Okay. Other questions?

(No response)

Good questions. Okay. If there are no more, we are going to move -- I am going to give you a quick overview of a couple of the facilities and then we are going to move on.

Two conference rooms, this is G and -- what is the back one there? Is that --

G and F? They are divisible. These are kind of our mid-sized rooms. H and J, which are behind me here, are video teleconference rooms. They have a fixed table, kind of a wing, that about six or eight people can sit around. They have two plasma monitors. I believe they are 55- or 60-inch. Hopefully, we'll get the key here and we can open it up.

We'll go into G1/G2.

As I mentioned, these rooms stand alone. The AV equipment is racked in here.

It is also -- there is connected to the main control room and the main auditorium. You will see there is another rack, so G1/G2 they have two racks. You will notice the infrared devices for the hearing impaired. As I said, the room is divisible. The majority of the rooms are divisible. Most of the time they are used in the open configuration.

Okay. H is open, if you would like to take a peek at a video teleconference room, so -- is there a meeting in there?

MS. WILKINSON: Yes.

MR. RYLAND: There is a meeting?

MS. WILKINSON: Yes.

MR. RYLAND: Oh, all right. I'm sorry.

E1/E2 is across the hall. There is a meeting. If you'd like to go in and just take a peek from the back --please try not to disturb the meeting -- and get a look. That is our largest facility, one of our most used.

It has a capacity in theater style of 150.

And then, in a training session or training setup it is approximately about 90 to 100. So if you would like to walk in there and take a quick peek.

And then, we will move down to

Conference Room D, which is kind of an executive board room setup. If you want to just walk in the back and see the two projectors. We'll move down to Conference

Room D, so just come on back. They are in a break, so we can get in there very quickly and take a look.

Come on in. Make room. I see a few more in the hallway. Come on.

Okay. Is that everybody? This is

Conference Room D, kind of our executive board room look, fixed table. We did the World

Health Summit here with the Secretary about four or five years ago. It was kind of like a G8 conference for the health ministers from around the world.

We have built into the table connections for laptops. We had to have a monitor for each one of the health ministers, so you will see a monitor connection there.

We use Brailer microphones currently, but we are open to new microphone systems. We are looking at the new Chinese Tandem when we do the renovation possibly. We are also looking at other microphone companies when we switch.

Again, the Crestron system is the control system. This particular room has a booth. E1/E2, which you saw, has actually a booth. It is one booth large, but it handles both rooms. F, and I think maybe G, has a booth also. So most of the rooms have an AV booth.

Typically, there isn't someone in there unless, you know, we have an event where it needs to be a dedicated technical person.

Most of it can be monitored from the main control room. Okay?

We're going to go back out to the left. You can take -- there is Conference

Rooms A and B, which are a little bit smaller.

There is C, which is kind of like F and G size-wise. And that is pretty much going to wrap it up here. I will take any questions in the atrium, the lower atrium, before we leave.

MR. COMER: Donnie Comer. The main control room we saw in the big conference room controls all of these rooms potentially?

MR. RYLAND: Yes.

MR. COMER: In this building.

MR. RYLAND: Yes. You can, you know, change things, turns things on and off, from the main control room.

MR. WYNEGAR: Dave Wynegar, Metro

Data Networks. What type of AV equipment do you use? Do you use Tandberg or Polycom or --for the video teleconferencing?

MR. RYLAND: Primarily Tandbergs.

We have all Tandbergs. There might be some legacy Polycom equipment, but I think most of it has been upgraded to Tandbergs. We have a purchase order in for about $250,000 worth of new Tandberg equipment to upgrade everything.

So everything will be Tandberg.

MR. WYNEGAR: And is -- the follow-on to that question, is that upgrade process part of the contract as far as this, or is that handled by CIT?

MR. RYLAND: The upgrade --purchasing the equipment is handled through the government side of it. Some equipment is purchased through the contract, like smaller pieces of equipment. But typically the large purchases, bulk items, or large items, or big

AV installations is done through the events management office on the government side. Did that answer your question?

MR. WYNEGAR: Yes, thank you.

MR. RYLAND: Okay. Here is the business center in Building 31. What you will see here in Natcher are the copiers in that room, and we have a couple of workstations here set up for attendees to check their e-mail.

Eventually, somewhere down the road, we have to get a small business center here. Basically, they are self -- you know, user -- you will come in, you can make copies, you can jump on the computer, check your e-mail.

So not a whole lot of maintenance by the staff, but they are here if they run into a problem. L like if they can't log on for some reason, then the technical staff would help them with that.

Okay? Any questions about the

Natcher facility before we leave?

(No response)

If you think of something later on, don't hesitate to ask.

We have a small pantry. A lot of the larger conference facilities have a small pantry. We have an ice machine, filtered water. The government is not allowed to purchase bottled water any longer, so what we have done is we have installed filters on the taps that we use to fill the pitchers with.

The contractor does, as part of the conference services, part of their services, they put fresh water and cups on the table.

There is an ice machine in there that is connected to the same filter. We have that in this facility, in 31, and we are trying to get that in all of our facilities.

So if you need to look at the pantry -- do we have a question?

MR. VATURO: George Vaturo. What type of scheduling software do you use for these facilities?

MR. RYLAND: The current scheduling software is Schedule-All. Some of you may go, "Why Schedule-All?" I have a television background. When we took over --conference services is what it was called at the time, three things I asked for, I said I need an engineer, I need a truck, and I need a resource management system.

And as I was looking for resource management systems, we checked into what hotels were using, we checked into what businesses were using, and oddly enough we found one through the broadcast industry. It happened to be out at the National Association of Broadcasters.

Saw Schedule-All, saw who was using it -- networks -- and I figured, well, these guys are -- you know, they need stuff that is robust and reliable. We looked into

it. It provided a business module because at the time we were on a fee for service. Right now we are under what is called a membership fee. All the institutes -- it is based on three years of utilization. The institutes get charged our budget -- a percentage of our budget based on their previous three years of utilization.

So Schedule-All provided a business module. Basically, everything we wanted to see in that system, when we brought them here for a demo they were able to show

us. Other contractors said, "Oh, we can write for that. We can do that." I'm kind of a guy from Missouri. Show me. I want to see it.

(Laughter)

So that is what we ended up with.

We have had it -- oh gosh, I don't know how many years we have had it, but it has been very robust. We were initially planning to run the two, the old software and Schedule-

All, side by side for six months. After about two and a half months we realized the other system was just too problematic, and Schedule-

All was solid as a rock.

We have never had a problem with it, never had the system go down, and I think somewhere in the neighborhood -- there is about 14,000 events that get -- take place --between 12- and 14- right now, but there is more work orders that are put into the system.

Not only do we use it, but our -- the rest of our division is using it for graphics, for photography services.

So I think there is well over half a million work orders in that system over the years that we have been using it. So it has been very robust.

Now, we are looking at other options, because we need to move to a more --something that will work on mobile devices, so

-- web applications, so we are looking at other scheduling systems, and, as of right now, there is no change scheduled, but somewhere during the life of this contract there may possibly be a scheduling software change. Okay?

Like I said, we are in that transition phase. So we have to be more accessible to our clients. If they want to log on at midnight and check availability, right now they can't do that. They can send us an e-mail and make an inquiry, but they can't see what rooms are available and book them. And we really need to get to that next level and be more available to them.

Any other questions?

(No response)

If not, then we are going to proceed upstairs to the Natcher lobby, and there should be two buses waiting out there, and we are going to go to the next facility.

If anyone needs the restrooms, they are at the far ends, downstairs only.

There are two bathrooms here and two here.

Before we board the buses, if you need the restrooms.

We're going to go up the stairs.

MR. HAMES: Lamont Hames. You mentioned 12- to 14,000 roughly events that have taken place.

MR. RYLAND: Correct.

MR. HAMES: Is that annually, like based on like a --

MR. RYLAND: Yes. Yes.

MR. HAMES: -- fiscal year or a calendar year?

MR. RYLAND: Yes.

MR. HAMES: Second question is:

what would you estimate the percentage of cancellations may be? And how is that factored in?

MR. RYLAND: It has gone down dramatically, but I would say there is probably another -- maybe a third more that are cancellations. You know, they will schedule them, and a week later they will change their mind and take it out.

MR. HAMES: Okay. Okay. About a third.

MR. RYLAND: Yes.

MR. HAMES: Okay. Of that total number roughly.

MR. RYLAND: Marianne has that data. It should be in TE-3, the cancellations.

MR. HAMES: Okay.

MR. RYLAND: It is included in that data, so --

MR. HAMES: Okay. All right.

MR. RYLAND: -- I would rely more on the data than my quote of a third.

MR. HAMES: That's fine. Right, right, right.

MR. RYLAND: There is definitely more than those. Those 14,000 are the booked, and the ones that take --

MR. HAMES: Right. That actually took place.

MR. RYLAND: Actually took place.

MR. HAMES: And so it would be a higher number for the initial reservation of the --

MR. RYLAND: Yes. You are probably looking at another 3-, 3,500 that --

MR. HAMES: Yes.

MR. RYLAND: Yes.

MR. HAMES: Okay. That's all.

MR. RYLAND: All right?

MR. HAMES: All right. Thank you.

MR. RYLAND: You're welcome.

We have the two buses here, the van and the bus, so feel free. How are we doing on this one?

Okay. We are going to drive by

Building 50, which will be on the left-hand side at the bottom of the hill when we get down here. I will point it out to you. In

Building 50 we have a conference room that can be divided into three separate rooms or opened up into one large room. It is one of the lab buildings, one of the newer lab buildings that was built about I guess 10 years ago. And it is a pretty popular facility with the people in that building.

We are -- it is on the corner.

When we get down to the corner here, you will see it on the left.

The conference center is on the first floor. Adjacent to the conference center is a little coffee shop. We don't run the coffee shop, but it is next to it.

This is Building 50 on the left, and the conference center is kind of in the center of the building. But if you go through the first floor entrance, it is on your right.

We are going to proceed down to

Building 1. This will be a repeat for those of you that were in the van. We passed

Building 50. I think Marianne pointed out it out to you. The conference center is on the first floor. It is adjacent to a small coffee shop. It is a room that is divisible into three smaller rooms, or it can be opened up into one large room.

Mainly used for scientific meetings that go on in that building. It is a nice conference center. It gets used pretty regularly.

We are in front of Building 1.

This is the first building, obviously, Building Number 1. FDR stood on these -- on that balcony there and made his famous speech when NIH opened here in Bethesda. If you look at the old pictures, there was nothing here but farmland. All the rest of this grew up around the campus, and now we have to deal with all of the traffic and all of the goings-on.

So we are going to proceed up the stairs, and we are going to go in on the first floor. This lower level is the basement.

Conference Room 151 is on the first floor on the right-hand side, and then we will take a look at that, and then we are going to go up to the third floor, which is Wilson Hall.

So if you follow me up, if we could be quiet. When we get into the conference room, we can get a little louder in there. But it is the NIH Director's building, and there are -- a lot of the VIPs are in this building, so we don't want to disturb them.

So I appreciate your keeping the noise to a minimum.

Thank you.

The plaque here commemorates the dedication back in 1940.

Okay. This is Conference

Room 151, the NIH Director's conference room.

He also has a small personal conference room down the hall, but this is where the rubber meets the road for the NIH. Not very flashy.

We try and be very conservative with the taxpayers' dollars, and the NIH Director is very attune to that. This room will be undergoing renovations.

I will try and give you a little idea what is going to be happening. We are going to be moving this fixed table out. It will be a modular table, new podium. This corner goes away. There will be a new screen, projector, a whole new AV system, new microphone system, new podium. The AV booth, which is raised right now, will get brought down to a flat floor.