Attachment_1_SOW.docx

Attachment #1

STATEMENT OF WORK

Scientific Health and Environmental Assessment; Risk Management Evaluation; and Document Processing Support for New and Existing Chemicals and Products of Biotechnology and Nanotechnology

A. BACKGROUND

The contractor shall provide technical support to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by performing environmental fate and transport; health and environmental assessments; and pollution prevention technical analysis to programs supporting the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), Pollution Prevention Act (PPA), Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA), Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know (EPCRA), Executive Orders, and other activities.

Sections 4, 5, 6, 8, and 21 of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) require EPA to screen and evaluate data submitted by industry, the Interagency Testing Committee (ITC), petitioners, and/or other interested parties for the purpose of assessing potential health and environmental hazards and risks of chemicals, biotechnology products, and nanotechnology products, which must often be completed within a short time.

Under the new chemicals program of TSCA, including the evaluation of nanotechnology and biotechnology materials, critical screening functions include the evaluation of the fate, transport, and other aspects of a chemical substance’s or product’s manufacture, processing, use, including the potential for new uses, substitutes, analogues, and pollution prevention attributes. New Chemicals Program screening-level assessments require the Agency to gather, generate, evaluate, and communicate fate and transport, toxicology, and chemical technology information for a wide variety of chemical substances including substances that are not yet manufactured for commercial purposes (for which there may be little or no published data) as well as substances which are well established in U.S. commerce (and therefore may have extensive published data). The contractor will be required to perform environmental fate and transport assessments using established EPA processes and for use in developing new procedures related to environmental fate and transport, and exposure assessments.

Under the existing chemicals program of TSCA, EPA reviews studies, protocols, and technical reports prepared by government or the private sector relevant to the characterization of potential toxicity, hazard and/or risk associated with potential exposure to commercial chemical substances. EPA collects, analyzes and assesses collected literature and studies as the initial steps in the characterization of the scientific adequacy for the information and generates appropriate reports targeted at the identification of the full range of potential or predicted toxicities determined to be associated with reviewed chemicals and to further determine inconsistencies, unexpected results or lack of data of sufficient adequacy to allow an appropriate statistical technical review, suggesting need for further data collection or testing often referred to as data needs.

The Pollution Prevention Programs operating under the authorities of the Pollution Prevention Act and related Executive Orders, help industry develop safer products and processes, protect workers and the environment from exposures to hazardous materials, and helps consumers and commercial buyers, including schools and other institutions, identify and select products with safer chemical ingredients, without sacrificing quality or performance.

The Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) Program, operating under the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know (EPCRA), tracks data submitted annually by facilities on chemical releases to the environment and/or managed through recycling, energy recovery and treatment. TRI reports help support informed decision-making by industry, government, non-governmental organizations and the public.

The Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation (OSRTI) manages the Superfund program, operated under the authority of the CERCLA, to protect citizens from the dangers posed by abandoned or uncontrolled hazardous waste sites.

Characterizations can be used to assess need for further data collection, testing or analysis and level of review can be varied depending on the quality of the final technical review and its place in the tiered system of: Screening Level Prioritization, Hazard Characterization, Risk Characterization, and Risk Management. Screening Level would be the lowest level with Risk Management requiring the highest level of review, assessment and quality control.

Completed efforts at all levels of review are posted for use by other technical staff and may be read or reviewed by the public. These tend to be highly technical documents. However, summaries can be used as a tool to obtain additional information.

Analyses and assessments of hazard and risk must frequently be conducted under severe time and scope constraints imposed under TSCA Section 5 (premanufacture notification) or because of court-imposed deadlines under Sections 4 (testing), 6 (control) and 21 (petitions).

Drafts of completed analyses and risk assessments or reviews may require outside review by scientists in designated disciplines prior to delivery to EPA. Completed assessments and reviews must adhere to relevant Agency guidelines. When necessary, they must be legally defensible and must be able to support regulatory actions by EPA. These diverse evaluations, analyses, reviews, and comments (in the form of separate memoranda or document sections) may be collated into packages that support regulatory decisions. The timetable for assembling these assessment packages usually requires coordination, adjustments and changes across the sections, and, in effect, requires the contractor to be on-call for rapid turnaround of small-scale tasks.

EPA must have access to the highest quality personnel, technical expertise, and scientific methodologies to assist in or conduct routine, peak workload, and short-turnaround scientific and technical analysis supporting TSCA, EPCRA, CERCLA, SARA and other acts which EPA may support. This access helps EPA sustain its regulatory decisions and non-regulatory activities when reviewed by the public, stakeholders, other executive agencies, Congress, or the courts.

B. PURPOSE

To meet these challenges, this contract will provide support for hazard evaluation, exposure assessment, risk screening and assessment functions various offices within the Agency.

The purpose of this procurement is:

1) to provide support for the review of Premanufacture Notices (PMNs), support the development of assessments of existing chemicals, and support the development of regulatory and non-regulatory risk management approaches for addressing health and environmental risks. For the PMN program, the contractor shall support the development of environmental fate and transport properties, existing and potential new uses, and related chemicals. For existing chemical assessments and risk management approaches, the contractor will support such assessments, through compilation and evaluation of data, of chemicals, and biotechnology products examined by the EPA. Assessments range from screening level evaluations that typically use readily available data to more detailed evaluations that assess and integrate hazard, dose response, exposure, fate and transport, toxicology, chemistry, and chemical technology, and potential risks to health and the environment. These activities also can include: preparation of reports, identification of testing needs for chemicals, nanotechnology and biotechnology products, development and evaluation of test protocols, and support for extensive data examination.

a. “Environmental fate and transport” includes gathering information, reviewing measured data and/or estimating kinetics and rates of biodegradation, hydrolysis, soil/sediment sorption, photolysis, water volatilization, partitioning in the environment, atmospheric oxidation, and possibly other endpoints. Determination of the environmental fate and transport is an essential step in assessing environmental emissions and exposure. Due to the frequent lack of experimental data, it has been necessary to develop and employ chemical structure-based predictive models, to estimate the physical/chemical properties and degradation rates needed in fate assessments.

b. "Information gathering" includes planning, conducting, and reviewing technical information searches (including the published chemistry literature, chemical reference series, chemistry texts, chemistry and environmental fate experts where appropriate, chemical and environmental fate databases and TSCA Confidential Business Information (CBI) files which will be available at EPA Headquarters in the CBIC).

c. "Report generation" includes the actions necessary to provide chemistry, environmental fate and transport, and chemical technology information. Report generation also includes identifying and supplying information that is missing, incomplete, or incorrect and may involve calculations, extrapolations, modeling, and estimations using chemical analogs and predictive methodologies.

d. "Information evaluation" includes validating, verifying, clarifying, correlating, classifying, summarizing, and interpreting chemistry, environmental fate and transport, and chemical technology information.

e. "Information communication" includes preparing reports, making oral presentations, actively participating in meetings, and performing related administrative duties, such as database maintenance and database entry.

f. The principal users of this technical support are the assessors who carry out risk and economic impact assessments, including assessors of health and environmental effects, human exposures, environmental releases, and marketing and social ramifications, as well as those who make integrated regulatory decisions.

2) to improve the quality and consistency of EPA's science by providing timely expert review, and assist in the preparation of (1) specific and generic hazard, dose-response, and risk assessment documents including those dealing with comparative risk; (2) test guidelines and standards for developing adequate test data to characterize the health and environmental effects of chemicals and biotechnology products; and (3) analyses of scientific issues dealing with hazard, exposure, risk, and comparative risk that arise in the course of assessments and Agency regulatory decision-making.

3) to support Pollution Prevention actions, including the assessment of risk management activities such as the following:

a. Alternatives analysis methodology involves the technical review of chemical components to determine their toxicological and environmental characteristics. This methodology uses OPPT technical tools and expertise (e.g., structure activity relationship [SAR] estimates from the New Chemical Program’s P2 Framework) to arrive at ratings for key toxicological and environmental endpoints. In addition, this methodology applies life-cycle thinking to more fully understand a chemical’s likelihood to pose human health and environmental exposure concerns.

b. Best Practices approach works with industry to identify cost-effective best practices and innovative technologies to reduce worker and community exposure to toxic chemicals. This approach offers opportunities for businesses to improve their health and environmental profile, while saving money.

4) to provide automatic data processing support and information management support to organize submitted data and EPA evaluations of these data; to provide expertise in software systems for the maintenance of data bases; and to provide presentation materials for completed assessments, expert reviews, and data bases.

5) to support OSRTI in the evaluation of hazardous substances, especially lead and asbestos; in conducting human health risk assessments; and to develop long-term solutions for serious hazardous waste problems.

C. STAFFING

The contractor shall be able to perform all of the tasks set forth below. The contractor shall provide a stable team of professional scientists and management and support staff to perform chemical and biotechnological assessments and related tasks.

As requested, the contractor shall provide the expertise of prominent nationally-recognized expert scientists particularly knowledgeable in selected chemicals or biological organisms, disciplines, and areas identified in individual work assignments. The contractor shall provide expertise in the following areas:

Chemistry/Chemical Technology

· General Chemistry

· Organic Chemistry

· Physical Organic Chemistry

· Inorganic Chemistry

· Computational Chemistry

· Environmental Chemistry

· Physical-Chemical Properties

· Chemical Fate and Transport

· Nanotechnology

Biochemistry/Microbiology/Biotechnology

· Biochemistry

· Microbiology, Molecular Biology

· Synthetic Biology

· Biotechnology

· Bioinformatics

· Biostatistics

· Genetic Engineering

· Industrial Microbiology/Fermentation Technology

· Microbial Systematics

Toxicology

· General Toxicology

· Acute, Subchronic, Chronic Toxicology

· Developmental Toxicology

· Reproductive Toxicology

· Genetic Toxicology

· Genetic Construct Assessment

· Neuro/Behavioral Toxicology

· Immunotoxicology

· Inhalation Toxicology

· Oncology

· Epidemiology

· Mode of Action

· Metabolism/Pharmacokinetics

· Physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling

· Aquatic Ecotoxicology

· Terrestrial Ecotoxicology

· General Ecology

· Microbial Ecology

· Plant Ecology

· Plant Genetics

· Plant Pathology

Risk Assessment/Risk Management

· Health Risk Assessment Methodologies

· Environmental Risk Assessment Methodologies

· Structure-Activity Relationships

· Alternative Methods/IATA

· Field Data Analysis

· Exposure Assessment - for Chemicals and Biotechnology Products.

Other

· Economics

· Statistics

· Computer Systems

· Information Technology

· Information Management

· Technical Data Management

· Database Development & Management of relational databases

· Outreach

D. TASKS

Performance of work under the contract will be initiated by work assignments issued by the contracting officer. The contractor shall supply the necessary labor, materials, and off-site facilities required for performance of work under this contract; however, timeliness and efficient use of resources are of the utmost importance and contractors may at times be required to work on site at EPA Headquarters.

The following General Requirements apply to all work performed under this statement of work. The contractor shall fully substantiate and document all of its work effort in this regard so that EPA may critically analyze any recommendations, options, alternatives, or courses of action flowing from the contractor’s work effort.

General Requirements:

(1) In evaluating and performing the services required under this SOW as identified in work assignments, the contractor shall submit all relevant information used in developing conclusions or options to the responsible Work Assignment Manager (WAM) for all projects for review and approval.

(2) All reports, drafts, papers, etc. prepared by the contractor shall be submitted in draft form. The contractor shall submit the completed draft to the responsible WAM for review and approval. The drafts submitted shall include copies of search terms, keywords and data sources for the literature cited (such that a search can be recapitulated) and make reference to all citations in the document for WAM’s verification and approval.

(3) When in attendance at meetings, the contractor’s attendance shall be limited to that portion of the activity for which the contractor is required in order to meet the requirements of the work assignment. The contractor personnel shall identify themselves as contractor personnel in all activities associated with work performed under the resultant contract, and in attendance at meetings in conjunction with activities associated with the work assignment requirements.

(4) Reports submitted by the contractor that contain recommendations to the Agency, will explain and rank alternatives, if any; describe the deliberation; report any dissenting views; list the sources relied upon; and make clear the methods and considerations upon which the recommendations are based. All final decisions will be made by EPA.

(5) When working with, transporting, or storing TSCA CBI, the contractor must adhere to all the requirements of the current TSCA CBI Security Manual.

(6) The contractor will comply with all applicable requirements of EPA Order 2100 as called for under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

(7) Deliverables shall be of high quality, complete, and meet work assignment deadlines. The contractor shall maintain good business relations and good cost control. Individual work assignments may describe more specific performance requirements on a case-by-case basis.

The contractor shall perform the following tasks as required by specific work assignments:

1(a). New Chemical Premanufacture Notice (PMN) Structure Activity Team (SAT) & Fate and Transport Reports

The Agency will screen incoming PMNs to determine which PMN cases will receive full Agency review (non-drop cases) and which cases will not receive further review (drop cases). Reports supporting SAT meetings and fate assessments shall be made by the contractor on assigned non-drop cases usually within three days after assignment. Focus meetings, which include the fate and transport assessment, are held twice a week at EPA.

1(b). Standard Review, PMN Environmental Fate and Transport Reports

These reports are designed to concentrate and expand on specific information needs identified during and after the Focus Meeting, an early disposition meeting in the PMN Review Process. As such, these reviews may take various forms (e.g., more information in one or more particular subject areas, rate of hydrolysis of the subject chemical, effect of pH conditions, estimation of solubility in water under specified conditions, evaluation of specific behavioral characteristics of a substance, further detailed analysis of the intended use(s) and of other potential uses, PBT substances, and the potential for pollution reduction or pollution prevention). The contractor may also be required to accompany the contracting officer’s representative to meetings with other Agency review staff and to provide technical expertise during internal Standard Review workgroup meetings as they may occur. The contractor shall not participate in any decision-making meetings or sessions.

1(c). Follow-up Review, PMN Reports

The SAT and Environmental Fate and Transport reports on PMNs provide the technical basis for additional evaluations, such as the prediction of significant new uses as required by Section 5 of TSCA. Specific PMNs for which these reports are required and due dates will usually be within one week of assignment. The contractor shall review, gather, develop, and evaluate all pertinent environmental fate and transport information that may help the Agency reach decisions. The information should be of sufficient clarity and completeness that it is readily understood by nontechnical personnel and that the information on the intended uses represents a sound baseline from which to make predictions. Predictions and rationale in these reports shall be based on environmental fate and transport properties, physical properties, or an end use effect derived from the scientific literature or relevant databases as well as first-hand knowledge, experience, and professionally based judgment.

1(d). Physicochemical Property and Fate Data for New Chemical Substances

EPA is responsible for the identification or estimation of environmental fate and transport properties for PMN substances which are in question or not provided by the PMN submitter. The contractor shall prepare reports which identify empirical physical and chemical data, such as water solubility, for a wide range of chemicals which is to be used as a source for analogs. Existing empirical data should be obtained from published literature, reference volumes, industrial literature and other commercial sources. The contractor shall use professional judgment as to the validity and empirical nature of the information in all cases and annotate the items ruled on.

1(e). Pollution Reduction/Prevention Assessments

The New Chemicals Program of OPPT provides EPA with an opportunity to foster pollution reduction or pollution prevention at the source for industrial chemicals. As directed, the contractor shall prepare Structure Activity Relationship (SAR) and environmental fate and transport analysis of pollution prevention claims made in a PMN.

2(a). Existing Chemical Environmental Fate & Transport Reports

The contractor shall gather, develop, or validate specific, in-depth environmental fate and transport information on existing chemical substances, classes, or subclasses of existing chemicals assigned for review. The contracting officer’s representative will initiate each existing chemical task by identifying the subject chemical or group of chemicals in a detailed scope of work statement. The tasks vary widely in terms of the type and amount of information required, but all such requests will involve structure environmental fate and transport information.

The contractor may also be required to provide technical support requiring similar kinds of review and analysis as described in tasks under this section for TSCA, CERCLA, SARA and/or PPA, as well as other laws administered by EPA. Such support will be described in work assignments if and when the need for such work arises. Examples of tasks are: (1) systematic grouping and ordering of chemical substances that are pending review to gain efficiency and to set priorities for review; (2) discussing the development and availability of new methods which support fate evaluations of new and existing chemicals; and (3) development of summary environmental fate and transport reports for sets of closely related chemical substances that have been reviewed under Section 5 of TSCA or under Title III of SARA.

The contractor may also be tasked to provide technical support for other initiatives within OPPT, for Pollution Prevention, risk assessment and risk management of new and existing chemical activities, including regulatory and non-regulatory actions. Technical support may include performing screening-level risk assessments and hazard assessment reports. Work assignments and written technical direction will specify the chemicals or groups of chemicals to be assessed.

3(a). Chemical Screening

The contractor shall perform screening level assessments of chemical, biotechnology and nanotechnology product data received by OPPT. Additional work may include triage of submitted studies and analyses using structure-activity relationships. Tracking of these screening activities shall also be maintained. Screening encompasses reviews at limited levels of effort from limited, generally available, information without extensive research or evaluation.

3(b). Assessments for Chemicals and Biotechnology Products

The contractor shall prepare health and environmental hazard and risk assessments. Analyses may involve the following activities: summary of data; literature and data review; evaluation including validation and analysis of data; determination of sufficiency of data for hazard assessment; identification of data gaps; and determination of effects of concern.

The contractor shall prepare statistical analyses, including but not limited to "no-observed(-adverse)-effect-levels" (NO(A)ELs), and dose-response curves. Measures of virulence and genetic construct persistence may be requested for biotechnology products. The contractor may be required to provide computer-assisted aggregation and analysis of scientific and technical data using statistical and deterministic models and other software tools available to the Agency. Where submitted data are limited (for example as in Section 5 Premanufacture Notices), the contractor may be required to perform structure-activity analyses with respect to toxicologically important moieties and structural analogues and biotechnology products.

The contractor shall be able to maintain, develop or modify statistical procedures and methodologies to compile, validate and analyze health and environmental effects research data arising from epidemiologic studies, plant, and animal bioassays, and toxicity tests and structure-activity data. This may involve the preparation, modification, and/or testing of statistical analysis methods and processing and computation programs. The contractor shall be able to adjust or fine-tune statistical packages to better adapt them to contractor use for Agency needs. In addition to facility in the Agency’s Benchmark Dose Software and Catreg, the contractor must be able to program in C++, VS Fortran, Pascal, S, and Visual Basic to compile and link-edit such programs as the JCL, JSP, Java, Java Script or a similar product, and also to use statistical packages including S+ and R, and the Statistical Analysis System (SAS) (resident on mainframe and on personal computer), with each as they may aid in the completion of EPA-required analysis, review, or assessment of toxicologic or epidemiologic data or studies. The ability should extend to use of statistical graphing packages such as SASGRAPH and SYSGRAPH and object-oriented languages which may be used to present various postulated dose-response relationships over a range of dose or exposure levels. In addition, the contractor may be required to create new statistical algorithms to aid in analysis and assessment. Analyses, assessments and reviews carried out under all the statutory requirements may need to support EPA regulatory actions; consequently, they must be accompanied by full documentation of any methodology used. The contractor's reviewer shall be available to discuss the results of any review and offer clarification, if needed. These discussions will be via teleconference and/or face-to-face meetings with EPA scientists.

4. Scientific Issue Resolution

The contractor shall provide the support required to address science issues, comparative risk issues, and/or other science questions of importance to EPA for EPA's development of science policy determinations and statutory decision making. For each issue, or set of questions, the contractor shall have scientists with expert knowledge of the subject prepare reports that substantively discuss the issue or questions, presenting the various options for resolution and basing the options on the published scientific literature; and these scientists shall attend a round-table discussion with EPA scientists at EPA Headquarters for further information exchange and consensus building.

5. Review Panels/Workgroups/Workshops/Symposia

The contractor shall organize, prepare, conduct, present reports, participate in and/or document the proceedings of Scientific Review Panels, Workgroups, Workshops, or Symposia convened to: 1) review health and environmental data to determine the current state-of-knowledge of adverse health and environmental effects; 2) review state-of-the-art test methods in health and environmental areas; and 3) perform related information-sharing tasks on health and environmental effects topics of interest to EPA. This effort shall include both administrative support tasks (which are integral to the planning, coordination and conduct of scientific meetings) and technical or scientific support for the preparation of reports and issue papers, as well as acquisition of cited key references and translations. The contractor shall provide administrative support only for tasks that also require technical scientific support under this contract. Support that is not technical in nature includes acquisition of meeting facilities, advance and on-site registration, non-technical note taking, court reporter services, and/or acquisition of non-technical meeting facilitation.

6. Test Guidelines/Standards

The contractor shall provide support in preparing health and environmental test guidelines and standards in OPPT standard guideline format and support documents that include the rationale for testing procedures and conditions for tests. This work may include reviewing existing guidelines and evaluating scientific data concerning the choice of test parameters (including sample sizes to achieve desired specifications), developing and validating new test methods, and formatting and transcribing guidelines based on decisions made by EPA.

7. Information Technology/Information Management (IT/IM)

The contractor shall provide technical information management support for intranet and internet information system development.

Information systems may require the capturing and processing of external and internal data sources using imaging technology, tracking information (both external and internal) within a system, capturing internal word processing data and/or other electronic generated data as well as external electronic data, archiving data, and possibly disseminating this information via the internet, EPA's Web Page, or a Division Home page. The contractor shall provide technical processing support and basic IT/IM support to complement in-house resources.

Technical processing support shall include but not be limited to the initial review of submissions and data entry following Quality Control (Q/C) procedures; internal transmittals; preparation and mailing of acknowledgment letters to submitters; preparation of submission abstracts and data summaries; document imaging support-compatible with OPPT systems and Documentum-to EPA systems; and maintenance of file integrity. IT/IM efforts, as defined by EPA Order 2100, will be conducted in accordance with relevant agency procedures and policies established and approved by the Office of Environmental Information and the OPPT Information Management Division, and include but is not limited to system life cycle management, capital planning and investment control, data standards, application deployment within the Agency’s IT/IM infrastructure, Agency and OPPT enterprise architecture, and information security. EPA Information Technology/Information Management policies are found at http://www2.epa.gov/irmpoli8.

The contractor shall provide support that includes, but is not limited to, the following: maintaining existing information exchange systems; developing management-event tracking systems; evaluating hardware/software/peripheral combinations for document tracking, review and dissemination. The contractor must be knowledgeable in the construction of databases used for chemical and biotechnology products. This includes familiarity with data formats commonly used for data bases relevant to these products. The contractor shall develop and maintain databases using such software products as: ISIS/Base, Lotus Approach, Lotus Notes, and other standard software as well as provide for data maintained in Genbank and RKC formats used for biological products.

8(a). Pollution Prevention Support

The Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 made pollution prevention – preventing or reducing waste where it originates – a national environmental policy. The contractor shall develop hazard and environmental fate and transport reports for selected chemicals or products. The contractor shall use available resources, expertise, and knowledge to complete the report. Physical and chemical properties may be obtained by the use of Estimation Programs Interface (EPI), chemical property estimation software, which includes BIOWIN (predicted biodegradability) and BCFWIN (estimated bioconcentration factors); the search of chemical databases; and the search of Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) files.

The identification of structural analogues for the selected chemicals under investigation is an important part of preparation of health and safety profiles. The contractor shall identify analogs, using key properties or substructure searches as obtained from OPPT databases, literature searches, and professional experience. Selection of environmental fate information should be based on available data from studies or estimation models, such as EPI SuiteTM. Toxicity information (ecological and health) for candidate chemicals should be compiled from hazard data for both analogs and classes of chemicals. This task can be accomplished through the use of ECOSAR (Ecotoxicity of Structure-Activity Relationships Database), by literature searches and data collection techniques. The contractor shall also identify other EPA priorities such as whether a chemical is listed as a priority pollutant, a hazardous air pollutant, a high production volume (HPV) chemical, a potential ozone depletor, a PBT (persistent-bioaccumulative-toxic), or other categories.

8(c). Provide Outreach, Briefings, Workshop and Meeting Support

The contractor shall provide technical support for EPA outreach to the public, industry including trade associations, academia, professional organizations, and governmental bodies in areas related to other tasks and subtasks in this statement of work; design and present workshops, briefings, or symposiums; design, prepare, transport, and staff exhibit booths; design brochures and posters; and prepare and disseminate information for workshops. When attending meetings, contractor employees shall wear name tags identifying their names and the companies they represent, and orally identify themselves and their companies before meetings begin.

9. Tool, Model, and Database Development

EPA develops and maintains a broad range of computerized methods, models, and tools used internally in support of new chemicals, existing chemicals, and pollution prevention programs as well as by external customers. These products include, for example, databases for tracking pollution prevention technologies, methods for estimating physical/chemical and environmental fate and transport properties, models for assessing potential human and/or environmental exposure, and tools for evaluating risk from chemical releases. It will be necessary for the contractor to provide technical support for EPA’s methods, models, and tool development in the form of data collection, programming, maintenance, and outreach. This support may also include website development and maintenance.

The contractor shall provide necessary technical support described in the work assignment when the need for such work arises. This may include skills such as HTML editing and website production and programming in a variety of languages, such as Visual Basic, JSP, XML, Java, Java Script, and C++, and a variety of operating systems, such as UNIX, LINUX, PC, WinNT. This may also include development of system design documents and system documentation, software development plans, unit testing plans, etc.

The contractor shall design, develop, and update databases, spreadsheets, and presentation tools; retrieve information from EPA and other on-line databases; design, develop, update, and use computer-based models and databases; and design, develop, and update web sites. Contractor will not be able to access secure databases, except as they directly apply to work required in this statement of work.

All software and websites must conform to Agency standards. In addition, software, documentation, and websites should be designed to be accessible to users with disabilities whenever possible.

10. Other Support

The contractor shall aid in defining literature and chemical structure search strategies and performing such searches. These capabilities will be required only to supplement, on an as needed basis, the standard OPPT search capabilities. The contractor shall provide supplemental references and translation acquisition, from a foreign language to English, when essential references are not available within the time limits of a specific assignment through OPPT's standard reference and translation acquisition sources.

The contractor shall provide presentation materials of completed assessments, expert reviews, SARs, data bases, resolutions of scientific issues, and test guidelines/protocols. Presentation materials shall include, but not be limited to Power Point presentations, posters, and covers for EPA publications.