XZ003-XZ996-3_Q A__Final.docx

Solicitation #XZ003-XZ996-3 Screening Life Cycle Analysis of High Impact Industry Sectors

Question 1 Which deliverables (specifically workbooks and datasets) from SOLICITATION NO. XX001-XX994 Life Cycle Assessment of Federal Government may be made available for use in this engagement? What are their contents?

Answer 1 The successful Offeror will have access to Excel Files “GSA Dashboard v10”, which primarily contains the output of the IO-LCA, and the “Key Materials Map”, which provides an overview of what material related data sets are available for the selected databases. Both of these are described to a certain extent in the GSA LCA Project Final Report in Attachment 1 of the RFP.

“GSA Dashboard v10” contains the following “user-facing” worksheets:

· Sector Prioritization. This dashboard worksheet was created to provide a simple prioritization of the raw environmental and energy data from the EIO-LCA model for each of the 428 sectors. For example this worksheet can show the rank of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per million dollars for each of the 428 sectors in the economy.

· Spend Prioritization. This screen has five basic elements:

· The pull down menu for selecting the effect you want to prioritize

· The pull down menu for selecting the agency or department within an agency that you want to prioritize

· The pull down menu for selecting the contract type you want to prioritize

· The table ranking 428 NAICS codes by effects weighted by Federal Spend Dollars in 2011

· The pie chart summarizing the top 5 federal spend purchase sectors for the chosen effect (and all remaining sectors) “GSA Dashboard v10” contains the following supporting worksheets:

· Standardized Intensity per $million

· Standardized Federal Spend Impacts

· 2002 Purchase Model per $million

· 2002 Purchase per $million with Fuels

· Ranked Raw 2002 Purchase Model

· Federal Spend Data 2011

· 2002 Purchase Federal Spend

· 2002 Ranked Federal Spend

· NAICS-IO crosswalk

· Price Index

· README

· Top 200 Sectors and LCI data

· Department and Agencies

· Uncertainty

· Controls

Question 2 Throughout the RFP, quantitative deliverables are requested to be provided in Excel and graphics in JPG format. We routinely deliver such results a secure, online via a web portal which allows users to access, interact with and analyze results including downloading those results to Excel and JPG formats. Please confirm this will be acceptable.

Answer 2 This is acceptable.

Question 3 In section 2.3.1 the RFP says that "the Offeror shall specify whether a single or two-region multi-regional IO model will be utilized." Would the Government be interested in the use of a multi-country MRIO that provides results for up to e.g. 20 countries of relevance based on the sector being analyzed rather than simply the US/Non-US split of a two-region approach?

Answer 3 Offerors may propose a multi-country MRIO. GSA will consider the benefits associated with a multi-country MRIO with any resulting loss of data quality (if it occurs) in the Offeror’s technical approach. (See Amendment 01) Question 4 The RFP notes that more effort should go towards understanding waste management than remediation. With regard to that statement in the RFP, are you also are more interested in non-hazardous solid waste management method impacts than hazardous solid or liquid waste management impacts?

Answer 4 The idea here is to focus on the aspects of the Waste Management and Remediation sector which are most relevant for GSA’s operations as an Agency. Based on the nature of its operations GSA’s impact is anticipated to be primarily associated with the management of waste rather than remediation. The Contractor shall analyze GSA’s purchases categorized under Waste Management and Remediation. Given the finding of this initial assessment, a determination will need to be made regarding the extent to which non- hazardous and hazardous waste considerations should be included in the next steps of the analysis.

Question 5 For the waste management sector are you more interested in how the impacts of that sector arise from the EOL choices made on average for the products and packaging purchases for each IO sector, or are you more interested in a kind of waste management hierarchy, perhaps with conditional parameters that take on values that can change the ranking of a particular EOL management method, such as landfill gas capture efficiency for the landfill management method?

Answer 5 The objective is to understand how GSA can distinguish between waste management providers when procuring waste management services on the basis of actionable parameters clearly linked to environmental performance metrics most relevant for waste management.

Question 6 The IO type analysis focuses on resource extraction and manufacturing impacts but has nothing to say about indoor air quality impacts. We didn’t see this criteria mentioned in the RFP, but it seems important (e.g., the sick building syndrome). Is this something we should consider in our response since it would take a good deal of effort to come up with a categorization of office furniture by type by indoor air quality impacts?

Answer 6 The goal of analyzing this sector is to understand the most relevant impacts for each sector. Offerors are allowed to propose additional characterization factors and/or other relevant environmental indicators in Section 2.3.4 of the RFP.

Question 7 Do you want to know key differences by consulting service providers across the big sectors, for example mgt consulting versus scientific R&D, rather than the within mgt consulting sector differences which is a sector that is probably impossible to disaggregate.

Answer 7 No, GSA is not requesting key differences by consulting service providers across sectors. While it may be difficult to disaggregate the Management Consulting Services sector it should be possible to identify specific “best practices” and opportunities for improving the environmental profile of GSA expenditures within the sector.

Question 8 Can you verify that the sector of interest is "Management Consulting Services" and not "Scientific R&D Services" (both of which start with code 541) which is one of the sectors flagged as having high impacts in the phase 1 study?

Answer 8 The sector of interest is Management Consulting Services (541610).

Question 9 The SOW states "The primary objectives of studying this sector are to gain an understanding of key differences between providers" - but no available models would allow an estimation of differences at a particular provider level. Is the intent to gain an understanding of what are the areas of potential impact that MAY differ between providers and could be used as a basis for procurement preferences"?

Answer 9 It is the intent to gain an understanding of the areas of potential impact that could differ between providers and to obtain, as a result of the analysis, clear guidance which could be used as a basis for procurement preferences. .

Question 10 The SOW states "The determination of an appropriate functional unit for this sector should be considered." but also says that an IO-LCA model should primarily be used. In such models, the functional unit is inevitably "per dollar valued unit of output". Is there additional clarification available about why alternative functional units are being requested?

Answer 10 We understand the IO-LCA model is driven with inputs in dollar terms. That said, dollars in the IO model are associated with kilograms of material in the case of steel for example, kilowatt-hours in the case of electricity, or tonne-kilometers in the case of freight transportation. The functional unit for management consulting services is of particular interest because there may be significant variation between companies in the cost per level of service provided. In addition, there is variation in the services provided between contracts. In order to provide appropriate input for procurement decision-making, environmental outcomes must be put in the context of a clear measure of the services provided. One objective of this portion of the Statement of Work is to explore possible connections between price, level-of-effort, salary/experience levels, meeting the service objectives of specific procurements, and environmental outcomes.

Question 11 One of the chosen sectors for hotspot analysis is the waste management sector. In an IO-LCA model this sector is difficult to model (as noted in the SOW) but has been done to date with available average data for all waste mgmt activities but given scale is largely driven by landfill activities. The SOW mentions about 5 alternative methods other than land-filling. What is the intended level of effort on redoing this sector? Is it intended we would make a whole new IO matrix trying to estimate the share of landfill/composting/etc for each sector?

Answer 11 The objective is to provide guidance regarding how landfilling, incineration, and composting should be prioritized and evaluated in procurement decisions regarding waste management. Amendment 1 provides guidance regarding the overall expected level of effort.

Question 12 Similarly, The SOW states "GSA-specific waste management activities should serve as a means of limiting the scope of the analysis" but these GSA specific activities are not provided. Can they be suggested to us?

Answer 12 These are assessed in Task 1c using the Federal spend dataset and other data as proposed by the Contractor.

Question 13 Structural Path Analysis - SOW asks for a spreadsheet of SPA results for each sector. A single SPA of a single sector for a single impact (e.g., CO2 emissions) is thousands of rows in length and almost 1 MB in size. Thus given all of the previously done indicators, the total SPA for each sector will be on the order of 100MB. Managing these files will be unwieldy for all parties (and why we made a web interface in Phase 1 instead). Is there more clarification on what GSA would like in terms of receiving SPA results (e.g., just the top 100 nodes)?

Answer 13 GSA would like to receive SPA results in a format which can be archived and which is not dependent upon the maintenance of a web service following completion of the project. While 100MB files are not a problem in principle, the Contractor may propose the use of a cutoff for the presentation of SPA results which would result in more manageable file sizes.

Question 14 Sections 2.4-2.6 - what does GSA have in mind in terms of effort of a "Streamlined LCA"? Streamlined LCA while commonly defined is practiced in widely different ways, from very short and quick analyses ranging up to large, IO-LCA screened tasks. It’s not possible to suggest a level of effort with the information provided.

Answer 14 The Optional Sector Analysis referred to in Sections 2.4-2.5 shall follow the procedures as described for the three required sectors in Sections 2.0-2.3. Amendment 1 provides guidance regarding the estimated firm fixed price dollar value of the work outlined in the SOW.