Assessing Agricultural Consumptive Use in the UCRB - Task 3

Assessing Agricultural Consumptive Use in the Upper Colorado River Basin - Task 3 - Data Preparation, Evaluation, Documentation and Recommendation

Type: Sources Sought

1. Notice

This is not a solicitation but rather a Sources Sought Synopsis to determine potential sources for information and planning purposes only.

1.1

The purpose of this Sources Sought is to conduct market research to determine if responsible sources exist, to assist in determining if this effort can be competitive and/or a total Small Business Set-Aside. The proposed North American Industry Classification Systems (NAICS) Code is 541620, Environmental Consulting Services, which has a corresponding Size standard of $16.5M. The Government will use this information to determine the best acquisition strategy for this procurement. The Government is interested in all small businesses to include 8(a), Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned, Hubzone, and Women-Owned small business concerns. The government requests that interested parties respond to this notice if applicable and identify your small business status to the identified NAICS code. Additionally, please provide any anticipated teaming arrangements and delineate between the work that will be accomplished by the prime and the work accomplished by the teaming partners.

2. Description

The Bureau of Reclamation's overall objectives of the third phase of the agricultural consumptive use study are 1) to develop and communicate sufficient detailed information and recommendations about selected remote sensing methods from a basin-wide pilot project and 2) to compare the Blaney-Criddle and Penman-Monteith-based methods for estimating potential and actual evapotranspiration (ET) from irrigated lands in the Upper Basin. Results from this work will allow the Government to make a decision on the best long-term approach for collecting agricultural consumptive use data in the Upper Colorado River Basin (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming).

This effort requires the Contractor to:

-Review data input requirements and recommend specific datasets as input to the remote sensing and crop coefficient methods;

-Evaluate the maps of potentially irrigated lands produced by each Upper Division state and identify areas where irrigated lands were not identified or were falsely identified as irrigated lands;

-Explore, recommend, and implement improvements for methods to determine shortage in the Upper Colorado River Basin;

-Compare actual ET results from the eddy covariance systems, operated and maintained by Utah State University (USU), to the results generated by the two remote sensing methodologies. Evaluations must compare daily (24-hour) ET measured at each eddy covariance station to remotely sensed ET estimates from the eddy covariance tower fetch area;

-Compare actual ET estimates generated by the Blaney-Criddle and Penman-Monteith based crop coefficient methods to ET estimates from eddy covariance systems located within the Upper Colorado River Basin;

-Compute net irrigation requirement from SSEBop and METRIC actual ET estimates for the Upper Colorado River Basin. The contractor shall apply universal effective precipitation method to compute net irrigation requirement;

-Compute actual ET and net irrigation requirement from Modified Blaney-Criddle and Penman-Monteith from potential ET estimates for the Upper Colorado River Basin;

-Compare estimates of actual ET, potential ET, and net irrigation requirement for the Upper Colorado River Basin generated by all five investigated methods (two remote sensing and three crop coefficient) on a monthly and growing season (e.g., April ¿ October) time scale;

-Provide recommendations for developing a unified consumptive use methodology in the Upper Colorado River Basin

3. Requested Responses

Provide the following Business Information for your company:

-Company Name:

-Address:

-Point of Contact:

-DUNS Number:

-Phone Number:

-E-mail Address:

-Web Page Address (if applicable):

-System for Award Management (SAM) Registration (Yes/No):

-Recommended North American Industry Classification System (NAICS Code) if other than

541620:

Based on above NAICS code, state whether your company is small business and provide additional information regarding the type of small business (women-owned, small disadvantaged business, HUBzone, etc.). For more information refer to: http://www.sba.gov/content/table-small-business-size-standards.

4. Potential Offeror Capabilities

Please provide responses to the following items:

a) What is your company's experience in providing the data preparation, evaluation, documentation and recommendation services listed above? Include contract numbers (if applicable), a brief description of the work performed, period of performance, agency/organization supported, and individual points of contact (Contracting Officers or Program Managers).

b) Does your company currently have any teaming agreements in place that will allow for successfully meeting the Government's requirements? In addition, please identify the roles associated with the teaming arrangement.

c) Provide other relevant topics, concerns, or information not addressed in this posting.

Please provide the responses to the questions above to Brandi Clark, Contract Specialist, at brandiclark@usbr.gov no later than 3PM MST on 20 November 2019.

5. Potential Offeror Capability Briefings

A focused capabilities briefing may be required at the Government's discretion. The Government will contact interested vendors directly should it be determined that a capabilities briefing is needed.

6. Response Procedures

Contractors responding to this posting are advised their response does not guarantee awards in future solicitations or contracts. This is not an RFQ or an Invitation for Bid, nor is it to be construed as a commitment by the Bureau of Reclamation. Submission of any information in response to this Sources Sought is purely voluntary; the Government assumes no financial responsibility for any costs incurred associated with preparation or response to this posting.