Q&A.docx

(1) Is this a new requirement or is there an incumbent contractor? If applicable please provide the current contractor name, contract number, contract award date and the contract award amount.

This is a new requirement

(2) Should we submit the Technical, Past Performance and Price as one volume or should these be submitted as three separate volumes? While there may be supporting documentation submitted – these are evaluation elements for consideration and the vendor should submit brief summary (not to exceed a single page each).

(3) What information needs to be provided/included in the Price Proposal? Price proposal elements need to address: Hourly billing rate for key personnel, administrative costs for managing the contract and any logistics for focus groups; other indirect costs (which may include things like payments to focus group participants and travel to the NIH main-campus in Bethesda, MD up to two instances for key personnel).

(4) What is the expected performance start date? Upon contract award

(5) To provide best value to NIH would, NIH consider fully qualified / experienced consultant candidates who are not located in MD but are available, as required, to interact with the NIH personnel and support the requirement remotely via technology connections, web-ex meetings and conference calls during routine business hours - EST. This contract may be conducted remotely for the majority of the work. Occasional travel, up to two times for the contract, may be requested. While NINR would request the travel, costs will be billable as other direct expense.

6. Under the heading “Period of Performance”, it states that the ‘consultant should be expected to complete an average of 10 hours/week for efforts’. My understanding is that this number is an average of the number of hours, it could be more or less as described further? If so, are there certain days/times that these hours are required? The hours may vary during the performance period based on needs for the consultant’s tasking – there are down periods of time where 1-2 hours per week are required while heavy development of simulations is underway after the scenario requirements are fully specified or staff are traveling, any there are heavy utilization phases, generally not expected to exceed 20 hours per week – the 10 hours per week is based upon an aggerate average expected number of hours.

7. What is the average amount of hours that have been utilized in the past 2 years? This is a new service. The group has had limited experience with a pilot consultation contract from which the 10 hour average hours per week was originally established.

8. Does the contractor need to be licensed to do business in the state of Maryland or can we get the license if awarded the contract? The contractor and key personnel do not require licensure in the State of Maryland. The key personnel will not have direct patient care activities and work may be done from the contractor’s site with occasional travel.

9. It states that the “consultant shall travel at least once to the NINR site”. Is this travel once a week, month, year, etc? The travel requirement is at least once for the period of performance. The contract is structured to support travel up to three times to the NINR location.

10. Will our candidate need to go on site for an interview? No on-site interview is required. The submitted key personnel CV/resume will be closely reviewed and if the specified expertise for key personnel cannot be directly ascertained from reviewing the CV/resume, there may be a need to clarify experience/expertise through a scheduled phone call.