Amendment_0001.pdf

Attachment 1 - TFSANMB14CI0001 – Questions and Answers

Q1. Are you able to advise if there is an incumbent contractor?

A1. Design Army, LLC, 510 H ST NE #200, Washington DC 20002

Q2. Is there an incumbent contractor who did the report from last year?

A2. See A1.

Q3. What are the solicitation numbers for the previous Annual Report RFQs?

A3. We do not have the solicitation number for the previous Annual Report. However, the latest contract number is NMB-14-0026.

Q4. Do you know why the last report was hosted on googleapis.com? Here is the link I am talking about:

https://storage.googleapis.com/dakota-dev-content/2013annual-report/index.htm

A4. NMB’s website is hosted on Google, the 2013 annual report was large and is being served from a Google cloud storage bucket

Q5. Is the Government COTR and our point of contact in Washington or WVA?

A5. The COR is located in Washington, D.C.

Q6. What is the procurement history of this effort? The incumbent? Pricing data?

A6. See answer in A1 and A3 for incumbent information. The amount of the purchase order was $39,000.00.

Q7. On page 14, paragraph 3.0 of the RFP, it states that the scope of this contract would be to “provide the design, layout, copy editing and production of NMB’s Annual Report in both Interactive Web-Based Report and PDF versions.” Who will be providing the text/content that the Contractor would be copy editing, designing, laying out, etc.?

A7. NMB will provide the Contractor sample text/content at the kick-off meeting. Final copy will be provided during the period between late-September and early November.

Q8. Concerning the above solicitation, what is the estimated project budget?

A8. We cannot release the projected budget. However, the latest contract award was $39,000.00.

Q9. 3.0 Scope - Requirements list "design, layout, copy editing and production of NMB’s Annual Report". We view copy editing as a different function from copywriting. Will all copy content be provided by NMB? If not, can you estimate what percentage of the 100-110 pages of the annual report will require original copywriting provided by the contractor?

https://storage.googleapis.com/dakota-dev-content/2013annual-report/index.htm

A9. Yes, all copy content will be provided by NMB. The contractor will not need to do any copy writing.

Q10. 5.6 - Contractor shall provide 75 printed copies of the Annual Report to be delivered to the NMB (internal office delivery required: Suite 250 East) no later than 2:00 pm on November 14 or the first working day prior to November 14. Please define "printed." Do you need 75 color laser copies or do these 75 copies need to be commercially offset printed and bound?

A10. Color laser copy spiral or perfect bound.

Q11. 5.8 - Contractor shall provide final content in a clean, editable MS Word format to the COR. For increased design flexibility the Annual Report will be designed in Adobe InDesign and not MS Word. Are you OK with converting the InDesign file to a PDF and then converting the PDF to an MS Word document?

A11. The specification requires an MS Word document. The delivered Word document must reflect the final report.

Q12. In reference to solicitation # TFSANMB14CI0001 for Design, Layout, Copy Editing, and Production of NMB Annual Report, would you kindly confirm whether or not this is a new program? If not, could you please provide the name of the incumbent and the contract number for the services currently being provided?

A12. We do not have the previous solicitation numbers. However, the current contract number is NMB-14-0026

Q13. Additionally, can this work be performed at the Contractor’s own facility?

A13. Yes

Q14. You wish to have a MS WORD hard copy layout proofs. Are you open to receiving a hardcopy from another page layout software. (Perhaps you have not conflict opening a Word Document, however, MS Word does not go as good a job with layout and design dynamics as a page layout software, such as InDesign. If an InDesign document can be exported into a pdf, which is available to be opened by all operating systems, will you allow this rather than MS

WORD?

A14. See answer to A11.

Q15. In the Solicitation schedule, each year is from Sept, to Sept. The sample schedule is good, however, when will your data for the actual annual report copy be completed so that the page layout can be generated. (Although a general layout can be produced, graphs, and table designs can be better conceptualized when the data is supplied.) In this way a better schedule can be produced for this proposal.

A15. See answer to A7.

Q16. The RFP makes several references to the “Interactive Report”, which we can view on-line.

What software is used to partition, index, and manage content for that Interactive Report? Will the same software tool(s) be made available to the contractor as GFE?

A16. The Interactive Report should be Open Source HTML5. Approved libraries are JQuery and Bootstrap and Polymer. Other Open Source libraries may be approved during the development cycle. Source control will be GIT. Since the interactive report will be hosted on a Google site, NMB will provide a development site. Other tools are Open Source and available on the web. Our objective is an interactive report that reflects our annual report. Although the site needs to be maintainable by us, we do not intend to change the report once it is published.

Suggestions will be discussed in good faith with the goal of web best practices.

Q17. RFP Section 4.0, page #15, references “mandated deadlines”. When are these annual deadlines?

A17. The mandated deadlines are October 15, November 14 and December 15 or the last work day prior to these dates.

Q18. RFP Section 4.0, page #14, references an annual kickoff meeting in July or August. What level of contractor support, if any, is typical or envisioned after the prior year’s Annual Report publication and the next year’s kickoff meeting?

A18. After the contract deliverables have been made and accepted, no support is required.

Q19. RFP Section 5.9, page #16, requires a weekly status report. Is this weekly report required throughout the entire period of performance, or only between the kickoff meeting and Final-version delivery each year?

A19. Status reports are only required between the kickoff meeting and Final-version delivery and acceptance.

Q20. It is stated that submission should be in two different volumes, one for technical specifications and the second for pricing. But the proposal instruction section (page 22) has 9 items that are required for the submittal, these items have to be in a separate PDF or within Volume 1 & 2?

A20. The required information may be submitted in one or more separate PDF documents.