Pre-proposal_Conference_Transcript.pdf

NEAL R. GROSS

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

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. NIHOD2016243

WEDNESDAY,

NOVEMBER 30, 2016

The Pre-Proposal Conference met in Balcony A 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 BONITA M. SMITH, Business Services Branch Chief YVETTE PORTER, Contracting Officer

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

Page Introduction by Yvette Porter

Overview of Performance Work Statement by Bonita Smith and Ken Ryland

Overview of ORS-Controlled Conference Facilities by Ken Ryland

Facility Tour by Ken Ryland

Optional Tour of ORS-Controlled Conference Facilities by Ken Ryland

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

(10:09 a.m.)

MS. PORTER: This is a pre-proposal conference for the Events Management and Related

Technical Services, which is RFP Number

NIHOD2016243. My name is Yvette Porter and I am the Contracting Officer on this requirement. I'm here today with Bonnie Smith, who is the Chief of the Business Services Branch, and Ken Ryland will also be here. He is the Contracting Officer's

Representative and the Events Management Branch

Chief.

Now, we've received a multitude of questions and the level of complexity was pretty great, so we will not be able to get to all of your questions today, but rest assured, we will be providing answers to your questions and we will publish those on FedBizOpps. And I'm sure everyone is familiar with that Web site. Is there anyone that is not familiar with the Web site?

Okay. This is the Web site address.

Since we haven't had an opportunity to formulate answers to the questions already submitted, I would like you to send any questions from today to my attention and my email address is portery@od.nih.gov, and we would like to have those questions in by Friday, December 2nd at 4 o'clock.

And we would really like to make sure that we keep this deadline. It's 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 then move the process forward.

And everyone --

PARTICIPANT: Excuse me, ma'am.

MS. PORTER: Yes.

PARTICIPANT: Questions that are brought up today are on the tour will be captured somewhere?

MS. PORTER: Yes, as a matter of fact, I'm getting to that next.

PARTICIPANT: Okay. Thank you.

MS. PORTER: I'm getting to that next.

Now, there is a sign-in sheet located over there.

I think everyone is signed in, is that correct?

Okay. Now, to your question, sir, we have a court reporter here today that is recording today's session and a transcript of the pre-proposal conference, will be posted as an amendment to the solicitation on FedBizOpps' Web site.

And we hope to have that posted -- I think we'll have it posted by Monday or so. Now, I just want to remind everyone today that it is your responsibility as offerors to monitor the

FedBizOpps Web site for amendments and notices.

Also, what I did want to state was that we do have a tour of facilities schedule after this session. Okay? So you will have a chance to ask questions at that time about the facilities.

As you know, the current deadline for the proposals is December 10th at 3 o'clock. Okay.

I also wanted to remind you that this is a 100 percent small business set aside, which means, if there was a prime/sub relationship for the offeror, the small business, the prime, needs to do at least

50 percent of the cost of labor.

Are there any questions about that?

Okay. And in terms of delivery of the proposals, this sometimes is an issue, so I am asking that you please refer to the RFP letter that was posted to the FedBizOpps Web site, as well as Attachment 1.

As you know, proposals are delivered to my attention, but I am not located on the main campus here. I am on Executive Boulevard, so you need to pay attention to the fact that if you are hand-delivering your proposal, 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 U.S. Postal Service.

If you were using the U.S. Postal

Service Express Mail, it was sent to the Bethesda, Maryland address. Please note, it is going to take an additional three to five business days to reach me and unfortunately, if a proposal is late, it's late.

Also, the contract will be for, as stated in the solicitation, one base year of 12 months and 4 12-month option periods. And as stated in Section I in the appropriate clause, preliminary notice is sent to the contractor about

60 days in advance to let you know of the government's intent on whether or not we are going to exercise the option.

Are there any questions about that?

Okay. So just an overview of some of the areas of the RFP that I want to -- I would like for you to take note of. Section B 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 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 are located there.

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

Now, Section L and M are very important sections of the RFP. Section L provides guidance on what to include in your proposal, it is the instruction to offerors, please read the technical and business proposal instructions very carefully and use the charts and formats provided.

Schedule 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 offeror's past performance will be evaluated after completion of the technical evaluation, and that only offerors determined to be technically acceptable will be evaluated.

However, it is really important, you must turn in your past performance information, as outlined in Section L, with your original submission. Are there any questions about that?

So we are not asking for past performance after the initial technical evaluation, so I just wanted to make that very, very clear.

Now, the proposal consists of four volumes, three technical, and one business proposal. I know that was one of the questions that came up. The cover page that was listed under the technical section has been moved to the business proposal, so there's only a cover page required for the business proposal. And this will be posted in a revised draft RFP.

After we get the questions in on Friday and we've had a chance to go through those, we'll post the final draft -- the final version of the

RFP. Okay. So at this time, Bonita, I'll turn it over to you.

MS. SMITH: I want to wait for Ken, he will be here shortly, but so we move along. One of the major contract requirements is to provide a comprehensive approach to delivering the services per Section C.5 in the RFP, to ensure subject matter expertise and management skills in key personnel. Any questions about that?

PARTICIPANT: Quick question. I'll go back, delivery date was December 10th, that's a Saturday, right?

MS. SMITH: Yes.

PARTICIPANT: Okay. Thank you.

MS. SMITH: And we're going to, potentially, extend that date, but yes, for right now, it is going to be Saturday.

PARTICIPANT: So there will be a drop-off place on Saturday, 10 o'clock?

MS. SMITH: More than likely, we're going to move it to that Monday.

PARTICIPANT: Okay.

MS. SMITH: Okay?

PARTICIPANT: Thank you.

MS. SMITH: Which is December the 12th, I believe.

PARTICIPANT: Thank you.

MS. SMITH: We were trying to figure out if it, in fact, they would deliver on that date or if it would be a drop-off date, but we still haven't heard anything back, so more than likely, it will be moved to December the 12th, and that will be amended as well and posted.

The expected outcome of the contract would be a successful execution of all the events, scheduling and planning, A/V support, setup and cleanliness, timeliness of communication, and this is a performance-based contract and the incentives and deductions in Option 1 are to one client. Any questions?

Additional expected outcomes is the government measure per section C.5.1.4.2, which is also in the PWI section, personal surveys, direct observations of events, and third-party planning is discussed here.

The NIH Events Management Branch outlook with the Event Workgroup Structure, emphasis shifts from number of rooms to number of events. Conversion from analog to digital, that would be work on aging facilities that requires upgrades, converting those, it would require planning and design, input, and hopefully, minimal disruption to operation and challenge, and Ken will speak more about that when he comes in.

These are the facilities that are on campus, which is Building 45, the Natcher

Conference Center, which we are in now. You have the main auditorium, you have three balconies, nine rooms, which are, four of the rooms are divisible, you can divide the rooms, and then we have two open access areas.

And 31/6C and Building 31/A Conference

Center, there are six conference rooms there. In

Buildings 35, 40, 49, 50, and 60, 35 has one room that's divisible into three, 40 has one room that's divisible into two rooms, 49 is one room, 50 is one room that's divisible into two, and Building 60 has five rooms. Questions?

PARTICIPANT: Will we be getting a copy of these PowerPoints after this presentation?

MS. SMITH: It would be posted, yes, on

FedBizOpps. I didn't want to kill anymore trees.

Then we have Building 1, which has Wilson Hall and

Room 151, Building 10, which is, we call it the CRC, you have Masur, Lipsett, we just added FAES, which is classroom-style, we have the TOC, and the Edit

Suites, and then the Hatfield Center actually has three rooms.

We have Rockledge, which has two rooms and then we are replacing Rockledge with another facility, but I don't have the address because that facility is going to be a replacement facility.

Then we have Executive Boulevard, that conference center, that has five rooms with nine room options, meaning the rooms can be divisible as well.

We have Fishers Lane Conference Center, and that's one room with, also, six rooms that --it could be divided into six. And that's the end of this part of the presentation. And here's Ken

Ryland.

MR. RYLAND: Good morning. Sorry I'm late. We run about 14,000 events a year so we're very busy and trying to schedule and keep track of everything is one of our major things in logistics for this contract. So I understand Bonita has gone over these things.

We support the 27 institutes and centers here at NIH. We provide the scheduling, A/V support, and setup housekeeping, as well as there's some video production elements into the contract, as well as our management over at television operations center, and our editing needs, or post-production needs, so that basically covers the areas of the contract.

There are, I guess we're still under performance part of it, and there's a firm fixed price part of the contract. As I said, it's very busy. Most of our facilities are booked, not quite to the maximum. We are getting ready to change.

A lot of the rooms have been updated. Let me go to the next slide here.

So this is a list of the buildings that we're going to -- on-campus facilities, but some of the changes, Building 31 is getting ready to undergo a renovation. We will totally be gutting that. It's 50-plus years old, so we'll be gutting that facility, so it's new construction, and then we'll have a new A/V system installed there.

These are just some of the projects that are going on right now. Off campus, our Rockledge facility, I don't know if all of you are aware, there was a new lease let, so Rockledge 1 and 2, which are at 6701 Rockledge Drive, those two buildings now will be totally NIH facilities.

Currently, we have a conference there on, I think at Rock 2 on the 8th or 10th floor, there's just two rooms, we are going to expanding that, we're going to be moving down to the 2nd floor. We will have an eight-room conference center, so that'll be an increase in the capabilities that we have.

The Fishers Lane facility, that lease is expiring and we just found out that we'll be moving, also, over to Rockledge Drive. There's another building there. We will have similar size stakes in the other Rockledge building, which is just across the street from 6701. I think it's

6700B is the address on that.

So these new facilities will be coming online in 2018, so we're in the planning stages of those. I don't know, were you able to get those floorplans for the Rockledge printed out?

MS. SMITH: Yes. Inside your folder, there would be -- there's a floorplan in there of the Rockledge --

MR. RYLAND: So we're kind of at the 35 percent of that. I don't think there's going to be too much of a chance in those designs, but that's what we're working from right now. So those are the upcoming changes. So hopefully by the end of this year, the majority of our facilities will be upgraded, and by 2018, I think we'll only have a handful of facilities that have not been upgraded.

So we're moving away from -- you know, there was analog, and then there was serial digital interface, and we're moving to an IP-based network.

This conference center that you're in right now is in the final phase of the renovation. We started back in August. We'll tour this facility, if you haven't already.

We started back in August and we shut down the facility, the entire facility, which is not easy to do, but typically, our slow times with the Federal Government are August and the holidays between Thanksgiving and December 31st, New

Year's, so we try and schedule most of the renovations during those timeframes.

So we shutdown Natcher in August. We were able to do the main auditorium and balconies, and we opened back up September 1st, on time, and this facility has been in use ever since. We took

Conference Rooms A, B, and C offline and renovated those rooms. Those came back online October 1st, and then October 1st, we took F, G, H, and J, so four rooms went offline. Those came back online

November 1st.

And then the last two rooms, D and E, are being done right now, so we figure with the holidays they would take a little longer. Right now, our facility Building 60 is undergoing A/V installation. That's the cloisters. That building had no A/V equipment in it. It was all portable. So that's all being installed now;

total A/V system.

We have two classrooms, a lecture hall, the chapel, and then we have the Rathskeller Room.

The Rathskeller Room is the only one that we have not put new A/V equipment into and we will be shortly.

So I think in the last two years, almost

80 percent of our buildings will have undergone A/V upgrades, so this new contract, you're coming at a good time. Before, we had facilities that hadn't been upgraded in 50 years. Now they're being upgraded. The NIH saw fit to make the investment.

I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of, we have about $10 million worth of renovations over the course of the last two years, so it's been a major upgrade to the facility.

So you're coming, whoever wins the contract, in at a good time. You'll have virtually new, if not near new, facilities to work with. As

I said, we have moved on, going with an IP-based infrastructure, so it's all on networks, so you need to understand network programming and those kind of things to maintain the system, so your A/V support and all have to understand that.

The beauty of it is, we future-proofed the government's investment, so it's merely adding a LAN connection and you can make it a source or a destination, and put it on the network, and you can feed it anywhere you need to feed it. So that's basically changing black boxes and things thereafter, so we're very fortunate with the new systems.

And we're very excited about that. As

I said, we support 27 institutes and centers. The work that we do is very important to the mission of the NIH. We feel that we're key in helping the institutes disseminate information gained scientific research to Congress, to the scientific community, and the public, and that's where, you know, we shine.

With the current president's mandate for transparency, a lot of these events are being

Webcast or distributed. The Webcast distribution is provided by our Center for Information, CIT, so they actually do the Webcast, we provide them the content, so they provide the streaming capability.

We also work with private vendors, should we need more than 5000, or should we anticipate more the 5000 viewers, we will go out to Akamai and others, but we do produce somewhere in the neighborhood of close to 2000 video events through the course of the year, so we are busy.

We have an in-house capability of government staff and then we supplement that through this contract with freelancers, and that's been very successful.

So let's see, I think that covers it.

We taking questions?

PARTICIPANT: Quick question. Your scheduling software, what are you using presently?

MR. RYLAND: We're using ScheduALL.

PARTICIPANT: ScheduALL. Okay.

MR. RYLAND: ScheduALL, oh, boy, many years ago we were looking for a scheduling system, we had one, it was killing us, it did not meet our needs, we went out on a search, looking, I come from a television background, ScheduALL was used in the broadcast industry for scheduling crews, studios, edit suites, those kind of things. The beauty of

ScheduALL at that time was it was very flexible and it worked with virtual rooms. It had a business module associated with it and we went and tested what hotels were using at that time.

We looked at three or four different softwares that were available, a lot of them were like, oh, yes, we can build this for you, we can tailor it, well, I'm from Missouri, I'm the Show

Me State, show me, and ScheduALL was the only at the time that could show us.

Now, there's been a lot of innovations in that. We're not wed to it. In fact, we are actively looking because we -- there's some things that ScheduALL hasn't done for us right now. We really want to be able to do like the airlines do.

People can book, make reservations online, 24 hours, 7 days a week. ScheduALL has some of that technology, but it's kind of quirky, and we haven't been able to integrate that yet. It's something we're looking at.

We want to be able to skim that information off of ScheduALL. I don't know if you've gone through the building, but you'll see outside of every room now there's a monitor. We'd like to have that schedule out there. There are a lot of other applications and things that do that better than what ScheduALL does, and more, I guess, simpler, and not as -- doesn't take as much labor to get that information out.

So we're looking at those kind of things. We really want to streamline the process, make it easier for the users, the ICs, to book the rooms, for that schedule to pop-up so we don't have to print out a sheet every day that says, well, this is what's going on with that room. We want it right at the door so people can see that. Yes.

PARTICIPANT: Yes, I had a question, if you could go back for a moment, when you talked about the distribution of work for production, you have government staff -- I'm just talking about video production events.

MR. RYLAND: Yes.

PARTICIPANT: You have government staff and then this contract and then freelancers, or freelancers come under --

MR. RYLAND: Freelancers come through this contract.

PARTICIPANT: So this contract has nothing to do with that.

MR. RYLAND: Nothing to do with?

PARTICIPANT: As far as the actual physical work in the production and editing?

MR. RYLAND: Yes. Well, there's the post production is under the contract, the freelancers are under the contract. Any freelancers we hire, we can bring them through the contract. Yes.

PARTICIPANT: How many people support the task at the moment?

MR. RYLAND: You mean on the government side or contract side?

PARTICIPANT: Contract side.

MR. RYLAND: That's procurement sensitive information. I can't give that out. I can tell you on the government side we have about

15 government employees. Yes, I can't give you the numbers on the contract side. Yes.

PARTICIPANT: In the contract, and especially for video production, you had mentioned that you have to use whatever government employees first before you could go out and get freelancers?

MR. RYLAND: Not you, we. We schedule our in-house people first. We have to make sure that they're gainfully employed and then we supplement, you know, that with freelancers.

PARTICIPANT: So when that need is determined, you will say, okay, we need to get other freelancers in.

MR. RYLAND: Yes.

PARTICIPANT: Right.

MR. RYLAND: We have our own producers, in-house producers --

PARTICIPANT: Okay.

MR. RYLAND: -- they work with the contractor to, you know, if we need 20-something people that day and we only have 5, you know, right now, we have, I believe it's, 4 in-house videographers, we have 3 producers, and so once we get above that, we're hiring. And we do bring in a lot of freelancers. There are a lot of days where we're doing five or six simultaneous feeds coming out of these buildings.

And the more we upgrade and put

HD-camera systems in, the easier it gets, and the costs come down, and the institutes use more, so we see that as increasing.

PARTICIPANT: So how much advance notice, like, the day before or will it be day of.

MR. RYLAND: Oh, we have a long lead time. Most of these events are booked a year, if not two years, in advance. The video stuff, we have time. We'll have months. A month or two.

We have time to plan it. The short lead ones are those special events. You're, obviously we have a new president-elect coming in, so I think virtually every president that's been elected has visited NIH, the vice president has come, so those kind of things, we may get a week's notice, if that, sometimes just a couple days, and that's just the way the Secret Service works.

We've had the Dalai Lama, we've had Bill

Gates, the current director has a very good relationship with the Gates Foundation, in fact, Bill Gates and his wife have been here for dinner, they have been here for an event, he gave a talk, so the VIPs are endless. We have Yo-Yo Ma coming next Monday, and that's a ticketed event, and already, we're going to be overwhelmed with that.

We'll probably have over 2000 or 3000

NIH viewers watching that, so these kind of things pop-up and we get about a week's notice on those

VIP events. We're going to go back here and then

I'll come to you.

PARTICIPANT: Have you built in the 4K contention?

MR. RYLAND: Yes. All of the monitors, projectors, and everything we're doing from Natcher, forward, Natcher was the first one, are 4K ready. Our television operation center is

4K ready, although we would have to make some changes to some of the view equipment that's in there. Again, it's just changing black boxes.

Yes.

PARTICIPANT: Sir, just to be clear on freelancers, so the contract for staff, you have freelancers to NIH, as a contractor, they could very well be full-time staff that's placed in various buildings throughout the campus?

MR. RYLAND: However you want to do it.

Yes.

PARTICIPANT: Okay.

MR. RYLAND: But trust me, the people you have here, they're going to be busy. They're going in rooms and supporting that, you know, there may be days when things are light and you can move some people around.

PARTICIPANT: Right. But when you say freelancer, you wouldn't expect the contractor just to call freelancers for every event. There's got to be people here on staff that --

MR. RYLAND: For the video production, yes, they do call freelancers pretty much --

PARTICIPANT: For production, yes, but for the A/V and it's required of a meeting --

MR. RYLAND: Yes, for the A/V --

PARTICIPANT: -- or if you need people here located full-time on the facility.

MR. RYLAND: Well, again, it's your --how your proposal, and I don't want to tell you how to put your proposal together, there's flexibility and there are ways to do things. As I said, there are peak times, and down times, and moving people around. There may be an opportunity that some of your workforce is, you know, here full-time and some of it freelancer, and that's up to you.

PARTICIPANT: Back to freelancing, will the freelancers have access to the equipment that's housed on, you know, the establishment?

MR. RYLAND: Yes. Freelancers, yes.

That's all covered through the contract, so basically, when you bring on a freelancer to use our equipment, if they damage it or something, you, as the contractor, are responsible for that equipment.

PARTICIPANT: I just wanted to make sure it wasn't a situation where you --

MR. RYLAND: Right. You're responsible for the -- you know, if they take out portable equipment, you're responsible to make sure they return that equipment in good condition to the Federal Government.

We do provide equipment, we do rent equipment, we don't have equipment to do everything, the equipment we have -- so let's take

Natcher, for instance, you'll see cameras and things that are built in, we use Sony Anycast systems, basically, because one or two people can run the whole production. We don't need to have three camera people, a tape op, a producer, a director, you know, we can do it with one or two people.

But in the field, portable gear, we do have some portable gear, I forget what the Sony camera is, but the Betacams that we have are, I think, Wayne, are they 900s or 800s?

PARTICIPANT: 900s.

MR. RYLAND: Sony 900 Betacam or XDCam equipment, so we have high-quality equipment to go out and record. Most of our acquisition is HD, however, we have had projects where we are recording on UHD, we're using RED cameras and things. If we don't have any of that equipment, we will rent or hire contractors who do have that equipment. And that's just based on the client's, you know, what they're specifying as a requirement for that particular project. Okay? I think you were next.

PARTICIPANT: There was a lot of specific line items for custodial, technicians, recorders, A/V, and obviously, management, expected levels, I didn't see anything in there for schedulers that actually are making the reservations. Was that missing or did I just not see it?

MS. SMITH: It's in Section B.

PARTICIPANT: Okay. Thank you.

MS. SMITH: And they might not be called schedulers. Yes. It's in Section B.

PARTICIPANT: I think they're called conference coordinators.

PARTICIPANT: I didn't see anything on light, so that could well -- I may have misread it, but I'll, obviously, take another look.

MS. SMITH: Okay.

MR. RYLAND: Yes, over here.

PARTICIPANT: I have some questions.

MR. RYLAND: Sure.

PARTICIPANT: For the past performance, how many past performance summaries do you want us to provider? And then secondly, about freelancers, do you have a group of freelancers that you typically used in the past that you recommend that we reach out to or do we just provider whoever we think can make sense to

MR. RYLAND: I will defer to the contracting people on the first question. The second question, as far as freelancers, we do have a group we work with, but we do expect contractors to bring people to the table with them.

PARTICIPANT: Thank you.

MS. PORTER: With regard to the past performance, we are asking for three years.

PARTICIPANT: No, how many? I know it's within the past three years, do you want just one past performance summary, one contract that we've done, do you want two or three?

MS. PORTER: Three.

PARTICIPANT: Okay.

PARTICIPANT: The examples of past performance work, how is that handled? Do you want those on a DVD or a list of performance and the proposal okay or how would you like that handled?

MR. RYLAND: DVD is fine. Anything we can watch. You know, I think, right now, DVD is fine. If there's an electronic sample, something being done on a computer, that's fine as well, as long as we can open them up.

PARTICIPANT: In the past performance, if you have a sub and prime, are you looking for past performance for both your sub and your prime or are you looking for past performance as one team?

MR. RYLAND: I'll defer contracting on that. I would assume it's one team. You're submitting your contract as the prime, so you would have to be able to show your past performance in those areas. So if your sub is the one that has the past performance, still submit it as part of you.

On the video, we would like to know what you did. Sometimes the productions are, you know, you didn't do all facets of the production so we would like to know what your particular role was in that production. Did you do everything from the acquisition to the editing, the post production, you know, so when you submit that, please let us know what work you actually did. Yes.

PARTICIPANT: Back to that question, so if we did do a production, if you had a contract where you performed work like video production and you had a subcontractor, does that count as your past performance?

MR. RYLAND: If the subcontractor was working for you, yes. And that subcontractor is included in this contract, I would say, yes.

PARTICIPANT: Okay. But what if the subcontractor was not working for you or was under a different contractor?

MR. RYLAND: Then that wouldn't be part of your past performance. I mean, let's say, I'm going to pull something out of the top of my head, I don't know, so if it was closed-circuit television, which I think might be one of the ones that was included in there, so if the closed-circuit television, you were managing that aspect of it and routing it through the campus, or whatever you're doing, and your subcontractor was doing the video acquisition part of it, then I would say, yes, you were doing the CCTV part, you were routing that through the network, but somebody else was doing the actual content creation. That's not what we're looking for there.

But if it was a project, let's say it's a video news release, and you had a subcontractor that wasn't working for you that did the video production, well, that wouldn't meet the requirement. We want to see that you've done video news releases. You know how to produce that. You know how to write that, get the acquisition, edit it together, and then send it.

PARTICIPANT: Thank you.

PARTICIPANT: Are you all going to address the questions that were sent in advance in this forum?

MS. PORTER: No.

PARTICIPANT: No, you're not. Okay.

So I have --

MR. RYLAND: Typically, those are --the responses will be put out and distributed.

MS. SMITH: Yes, we talked about that already.

MR. RYLAND: Yes. Okay. Any other questions? Nice to see so many of you out there.

All right. So we'll start here with the tour?

MS. SMITH: Yes.

MR. RYLAND: All right. We're going to do a tour of Natcher and then we have a bus coming to take you to the other outlets. First of all, let me thank you all. This is a very important contract for us and for the NIH. As I said, a lot of the research that goes on here and disseminating that information, conferences, scientific symposia is where a lot of these things happen, where new ideas happen, and the facilities we have in making sure that these events run smoothly helps these ideas and things get facilitated, and brought out, and whatever contract that wins this will be working with us to make sure that that happens.

So we appreciate all of you coming out today. We're going to start with the Natcher tour.

We have three balconies. So we'll just start with this room over here. As I said, the balconies have been upgraded with 4K projector. We also have large monitors put in, wireless sound system, T.V.

cameras. Each one of the balconies has an Anycast system.

There are, I believe, just two cameras in each balcony. The main auditorium has four cameras with the ability to plug-in a fifth and a sixth, if needed. Then we have breakout rooms A through J. They vary in size from 30 or 40 to 150.

Most, if not all, of the rooms are divisible in some fashion, although, most of the time they're used, utilized, in the open configuration because we typically, the institutes have small rooms, when they come to these facilities, they're looking for a larger venue, so we're finding that the majority of our events are now being pushed, you know, 100-plus, so we're trying to build facilities that'll accommodate that.

So we're going to do downstairs -- yes.

PARTICIPANT: Just a quick question.

So everything in the Natcher Building are off of, like, one large switcher or is it -- how's it sent over to --

MR. RYLAND: When you say, switcher, the distribution is now on an IT network.

PARTICIPANT: Oh, okay. I get you.

Okay.

MR. RYLAND: Okay. So it's all on IP.

So you can route anything anywhere. One of the requirements of this facility, and moving forward in our facilities, is the ability to move voice, data, and video seamlessly between our facilities, not just within the facility, but also within the

NIH campus and off-campus.

So our television operations center allows us, and that was just upgraded last year, so we're allowed to take any information from here and we can distribute it to any one of our conference facilities. Now, some of the ones off-campus, we do not have fiber, we don't have those kind of connections, we use B2C and other connections, although we are working to get fiber optic connections to that.

Obviously, those are more expensive.

We're looking at new technologies. There's a lot of new ways to do that, so we're looking at that, but everything now is pretty much IP-based in these facilities. We do have some older facilities which do have, like, you know, routers and switchers, but those are getting phased out.

So the switchers are the Anycast systems for the video production side of it. Okay?

Okay. We're going to head downstairs. We'll show you the back gate. I don't know which rooms are booked, but we'll go into the rooms that are not booked right now. I know the main auditorium is in use.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record and resumed following a brief recess.)

MR. RYLAND: So these poster boards are something that right now there's a third-party contractor that's hired to provide those. But if you have those resources, they would need to provide another contract, as well. But these poster sessions are required from time to time.

They could vary from a handful to, as you can see, we've probably got about 50 of them in there right now.

Okay. We're going to head down these steps. So these monitors were not here, the original installation. These are new. These can be used for digital signage, they could be used for video, pretty much anything you want to wrap to them. We'll expect the contractor to be able to put information up there. One of them we had a couple of weeks ago I think used it the best. They showed where the cafeterias were. They showed where taxi pickup was. They showed where the restrooms were. So that was a nice use of these.

So, again, capability, it's just a land connection. We can change it from, you know, a source to a destination very easily. But, again, digital signage, video. Whatever we want to wrap to these, we can.

There are three of them. There's one here, one in the middle, and there's one on the other steps located on the other side.

We're using an AMX control system.

We're using an AMX control system. This is a monitor here. It serves many purposes. Again, it could be digital signage, we can look at what's going on in the room with the cameras that are in there. It's also AD control. You can put in your password and control the room without ever entering it.

We are looking at -- I didn't bring this up earlier. We're looking at being able to remote access into all the rooms, so AD technicians don't necessarily have to run down to the room.

Basically, a lot of your computer support now, they can remote access into the computer, they can take control of it, fix or turn things on and off. We want to be able to have that same capability, so we're looking at a separate VLAN network that will allow us to do that.

PARTICIPANT: And this is what your scheduling system interface with, as well?

MR. RYLAND: Yes. Yes, we'd like to be able to scrape that information that's in the scheduling system and be able to put it right on there. You know, the room is occupied, here's the event that's in there. We haven't gotten quite there yet. As I said, this was all just installed.

We want to go over here. So most of our facilities have a pre-function area, you can see today, where people can check in, get their badges, do that. This is probably a third-party contractor that's doing this for the IC that set up the event. A lot of the institutes and centers have contracts for providing that support. We also can provide that support through your contract or whoever wins the contract, but these are the type of things in the pre-function area that go on here.

You'll see it outside every space. I think we've got another one pre-set down here for pre-function. Most of our facilities have pre-function space, so we can do that without being in the rooms.

You'll see the monitors on either side.

I see today they've got a campus map, and they're identifying, this is an NCI symposium, chromosome biology. They're in the main auditorium.

I'm going to let a few of you go in and look at the bat cave. We'll just rotate in. We don't want to disturb the event that's going on, but you can see the bat cave is all recently done back in August. So, again, it's all IT based.

So let's take three or four at a time.

Feel free to take pictures, as long as they're not flash.

PARTICIPANT: What percentage, on the contract, what percentage of the contract actually manages events? I heard you say a lot of them use third party. What percentage of the events that happen --

MR. RYLAND: They're small. When you say that kind of stuff, where they're doing traveling stuff, very minimum.

PARTICIPANT: Okay.

MR. RYLAND: But the day of the events, you know, as far as what goes in, that's --

PARTICIPANT: Right. We're here.

Right, got it.

PARTICIPANT: Quick question. So these are all conference . . .

MR. RYLAND: Go ahead. The next three or four, go on in. That's good, if you'd just hold on right here. I didn't see who's in there, I don't see who's there, but whoever is here provided by that contractor.

Okay, go ahead. One, two, three. One more.

PARTICIPANT: So that would mostly be government people?

MR. RYLAND: No, they're not government.

PARTICIPANT: Okay. So these --

MR. RYLAND: None of the AD supports, only the video production.

PARTICIPANT: Do you what the NIH freelance bench is, like in terms of the number of people that you keep on hand?

MR. RYLAND: Well, we don't keep them on the contractor, basically, so --

PARTICIPANT: Oh, I thought you said you guys have a pool, as well.

MR. RYLAND: Well, we did, but they've kind of took our pool and then they've supplemented that, too. So, you know, it's mainly videographers, lighting and sound people.

PARTICIPANT: Like dozens or hundreds?

I mean --

MR. RYLAND: Well, on certain days, we can have as many as 20 people, you know, if all the rooms are busy. We only have, as I said, we only have four videographers.

PARTICIPANT: Right.

MR. RYLAND: So there are days there could be that's going on, and we do productions not only on campus but off campus.

PARTICIPANT: Right.

MR. RYLAND: So just last weekend, we were at the VA, so our in-house team was there. But there can be, you know, I've seen days where we've had 20 different people on it.

PARTICIPANT: Okay. Because I saw the indicator, and it's hard to tell, like, sort of whether the unit of measurement is about like 50

DPs over the course of a year or is it 50 over --

MR. RYLAND: I thought there was a range. I thought there was a range. I'm not sure.

I didn't write the contract this time.

PARTICIPANT: Okay.

MR. RYLAND: So I'm going to take you back to D and E, which are under construction right now. We'll start with E. Everybody should fit in here pretty nicely. Well, this is one of the rooms that's getting ready for the renovation. They're finishing up in D, and then they're going to come in here.

So this is Conference Room E. This is our largest breakout room that we have. We can get about 150 in here theater style. In preparation for the renovation that's going on, we had to trench, open up the floor, so these are all brand new floor boxes. The old floor boxes were original to the building. We added, based on things that we've done and room configurations, we added additional floor boxes, so I think there's one under this somewhere in the middle here.

But this room can be anything from theater style, an advisory council which would be a center whole, symposium. We've had poster sessions in here. So it's a variety of uses, very flexible room. It is divisible, so we can divide it in half, although I would say 90 percent of the time it's open in the configuration that you see right now.

In all of the breakout rooms, we are taking up the carpet and we're putting down hearing loops for the hearing impaired. That way, they don't need to have an infrared device or anything.

If they have a cochlear implant or hearing-assisted device already, they don't need another device.

As soon as they walk into the room, their coil will pick up the audio from the room. So that's one of the things we're doing to be more ADA compliant.

We're trying to make our rooms as accessible as possible.

We did not, however, do that in the main auditorium in the balconies just because we would have to take furniture and chairs and everything out, and the expense right now was more than what we had budgeted. But we are looking at those. We do have infrared devices. Those are going away, but the new ones are being built in. So we do have those. We just haven't done the hearing loop in our large rooms.

And that's kind of our model for all the rooms moving forward. It's not the latest and greatest technology, but it seemed to be the one that works the best.

All right. I'm going to take you next door to D so you can see what a hearing loop looks like with the carpet up. And the room is a mess.

So I'm not going to bring everybody in just because of the -- but you guys can just take a peek. I don't want to bring everybody in here because we don't want to damage the hearing loop that's on the floor.

The contractor working here now is CEI out of Virginia. They were the ones that won the contract for the equipment and installation. K2

Audio out of Colorado did the designs.

PARTICIPANT: What are you replacing the old radiators with? You don't know the name, the --

MR. RYLAND: I don't know what they put

in. Do you know what the radiators are for the new ones?

PARTICIPANT: These?

MR. RYLAND: No, for the hearing impaired.

PARTICIPANT: Oh, are they Sennheiser?

PARTICIPANT: Williams Sound.

PARTICIPANT: Williams Sound, that's who it is, yes.

PARTICIPANT: What's the conferencing equipment?

MR. RYLAND: The conferencing equipment as far as?

PARTICIPANT: Is this permanent conferencing equipment around this table?

MR. RYLAND: Yes.

PARTICIPANT: What company, what brand, do you know?

PARTICIPANT: DSL.

PARTICIPANT: DSL, okay.

MR. RYLAND: Hi, Victor. I don't want to bring everybody in. We've got the hearing loop on the floor and it can be damaged. CEI is the contractor that's doing the integration and equipment installation. K2 Audio out of Colorado was the design team that we used. The reason we selected K2, they did the Capitol Visitors Center, and we worked closely with the head engineer now, the chief down there, so he recommended K2.

This is kind of our executive board room, the one we had the fixed table. None of the other rooms have fixed tables. We've removed all the fixed tables now, and everything is modular.

PARTICIPANT: And then housekeeping, that's a different contract, right? Setting up the rooms and --

MR. RYLAND: No, that's part of this contract.

PARTICIPANT: That is part of that?

MR. RYLAND: Yes, yes. Four cameras built in here, video production. Just watch the hearing loop. That's why I didn't bring everybody in.

PARTICIPANT: I just cost you 50 grand on that one.

MR. RYLAND: No. All right. Is that everybody? We're going to cut through here, and you can see just some of the smaller rooms. I'm not used to somebody having to follow me with a microphone.

Come on in. This is Conference Room C, one of the smaller rooms. A and B are smallest.

H and J, they're video teleconference rooms. New carpet again, new floor boxes. We've replaced 13 projectors in the building and gone with large monitors or displays, again reducing the maintenance costs. Bulbs are expensive, they wear out. Three-year warranty on the monitors, so we get much more use out of them now. These aren't

LED. Well, they are LED, but now we have two video walls. I don't know if you saw on D, there's a video wall in D. We also have a video wall in F.

So we're moving away from projectors as much as we can. They still are important in our larger venues, but we're trying to reduce the operating costs and maintenance costs. So, again, like I said, we were able to eliminate 13 projectors in this building and go to large 95-inch monitors. So as the displays get bigger, we hope to remove more projectors.

So the breakout rooms are used in a number -- you see this is set up tables. They can be for team-building exercises. They can be used in a theater style. They can be used in training.

So we have a number of different tables. We have round tables, we have narrow tables for training.

We have the larger tables for advisory committees and conferences. So we have quite a variety of setups for each of the rooms that we have here in virtually all of our facilities.

As I said, the only room that has a fixed table now is D. We had fixed tables in H and J.

Those were our video teleconferencing rooms. We eliminated those fixed tables, again, for flexibility. We want to be able to accommodate as many different types of meetings and events as we can.

All right. Let's see. This is just one of the smaller rooms. Just trying to give you a sampling of the different types of rooms that are here and configurations.

So one of the things I didn't tell you earlier, each one of these rooms can stand alone independently. There's a rack in each room, and they're all connected back to the bat cave, which was the first room that you saw down here with all the racks in it. We did that for several reasons.

If we need to take something offline, it wouldn't take the whole system down. So as I said, they operate independently, but we can send video, audio, and data back to the main room and then distribute it wherever we need to. We have fiber that comes into this building. Most of the buildings on campus are connected via fiber back to our television operations center, which is in

Building 10 which you'll see later. Pretty sophisticated. We're like a satellite uplink facility. We don't have satellites, but we're connected to Encompass down in Atlanta. So we can pretty much transmit anywhere in the world. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, we were transmitting to space because Dr. Collins did the space chat with one of the researchers, genetic researchers that's on the international space station.

So we have that capability. We can broadcast anywhere in the world. We're connected to the AVOC downtown, which is the Verizon AVOC, the Audiovisual Operations Center. We have fiber connections there. As I said, we have fiber connections to Encompass. We are connected via fiber to FDA, to CDC, to HHS downtown. So we have the ability to transmit high-resolution images both ways, to and from. So we can receive and send.

PARTICIPANT: Are meeting planners able to view availability and schedule as a meeting planner trying to book space, or do they literally go to the scheduler to check availability?

MR. RYLAND: Most of it is coming through the scheduler. They do have the availability to check some of that online, although it's very clunky. It's not, it's not where we want it to be.

PARTICIPANT: And second question: do you have a built-in buffer time between different types of events?

MR. RYLAND: Yes. There are buffer times that are set up. Typically, it's an hour before and a half-hour after, and those buffer times can be changed as needed. Good question.

Okay. Do you want to see any other --yes?

PARTICIPANT: Since you go through

Encompass and AVOC, do you do a lot of media hits for interviews, saving the person from going anywhere and doing it from here with networks or any other entity?

MR. RYLAND: We have done a lot, if you're talking about satellite media tours, yes.

Primarily, it's -- sorry, I have my back to you all.

Primarily, it's Dr. Tony Fauci who's the director of the NIAID, National Institute of Allergy and

Infectious Diseases. That's another thing, you'll have to learn all the acronyms. Each institute has their own. There's NIDDK, NCI.

There's 27 institutes and centers, and they all have their own acronyms. So that, in and of itself, is a learning experience.

But Dr. Tony Fauci with Zika virus, we were, there were days we did 15 or 20 satellite media tours with Dr. Fauci with Good Morning

America, with all the, you know, the morning talk shows, with local news and network news organizations, PBS. You name it, we were doing it.

So let's see. We had Zika. What was the one before that? Ebola. As many of you may have known, we did have an Ebola patient here at the Clinical Center in Building 10. We did a press conference on the arrival, which was very short notice. I know somebody asked about notice. That was very short notice.