PEAS Call Center RFP

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) issued a Request for Proposal on March 13, 2019, for a telephone answering service to support the Pollution Emergency Alerting System (PEAS), a program established in 1975 that enables public reporting of hazardous substance spills and environmental incidents. The procurement seeks a contractor to provide 24/7/365 backup answering and incident reporting services for a toll-free hotline (800-292-4706), with the capacity to handle a minimum of two simultaneous calls while maintaining hold times under one minute. Key deliverables include digitally recording all conversations, entering incident information into DEQ-approved formats, and immediately transmitting reports via email, secure messaging, text paging, and secure website posting to appropriate DEQ district offices during business hours (8 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST Monday-Friday) or to on-call personnel after hours. The contractor must resolve reports within an average of 15 minutes per call and maintain 24-hour internet connectivity to access the GoFORMZ online database system for data logging. The contract includes a three-year term from May 1, 2019, through April 30, 2022, renewable for up to two additional one-year periods at the State's discretion. The RFP timeline included a bidder questions deadline of March 22, 2019, with answers posted March 26, 2019, and proposal submissions due April 3, 2019, at 3:00 p.m. Eastern. Required qualifications include commercial general liability insurance ($1,000,000 each occurrence/$2,000,000 aggregate), automobile liability ($1,000,000), workers' compensation, and employers' liability ($500,000) coverage, with the State named as additional insured.

The RFP includes no minority business set-asides, no location requirements, and no vendor location preferences, meaning all qualified contractors are eligible to respond regardless of business classification or geographic location. The current vendor, AMBS Call Center, receives an average monthly payment of $454, which may vary based on call volume; however, the DEQ is not disclosing its budget at this time. The contractor must integrate with the State's existing GoFORMZ online database system for secure incident reporting and must comply with all federal provisions addendums, including Davis-Bacon Act, debarment and suspension, and Byrd Anti-Lobbying Act compliance requirements. Pricing is structured with separate charges for monthly answering services, per-minute message or call charges, per-minute out-dial charges for operator contact attempts, and per-minute operator time charges, with bidders encouraged to offer quick payment discounts. Historical call data from 2018 shows an average of 54 calls monthly with peaks reaching 113 calls and average call lengths of 8 minutes with peaks reaching 16 minutes, providing baseline metrics for capacity and cost projections. Monthly invoices are due by the 15th of each month with detailed Excel-formatted reports of incident data, call statistics, and activity logs, and the State will make payments via Electronic Funds Transfer within 45 days of invoice receipt.