HEALTH CANADA ADVANCE CONTRACT AWARD NOTICE
TITLE: The Marginal Air Pollution-Mortality Relationship in the American Cancer Society and Canadian Census Cohorts
SOLICITATION NUMBER:
1. The purpose and explanation of an ACAN
An Advance Contract Award Notice (ACAN) allows Health Canada contracting authorities to post a notice on the Government Electronic Tendering System (GETS), for no less than fifteen (15) calendar days, indicating to the supplier community that a good, service or construction contract will be awarded to a pre-identified contractor. If no other supplier submits, on or before the closing date, a Statement of Capabilities that meets the requirements set out in the ACAN, the contracting authority may then proceed with the award. However, should a Statement of Capabilities be found to meet the requirements set out in the ACAN, then the contracting authority will proceed to a full tendering process.
2. Rights of suppliers
Suppliers who believe that they are fully qualified and available to provide the services or goods described in this ACAN may submit a Statement of Capabilities clearly demonstrating how they meet the advertised requirement. This Statement of Capabilities must be provided via e-mail only to the contact person identified in Section 12 of the Notice on or before the closing date and time of the Notice. If there is a reasonable level of evidence regarding capability, the requirements will be opened to electronic or traditional bidding processes.
3. Proposed Contractor
The Regents of the University of California
c/o Sponsored Projects Office
University of California, Berkeley
2150 Shattuck Avenue, Suite 313
Berkeley, CA 94704-5940
4. Definition of Requirements or Expected Results
Long term exposure to outdoor air pollution is known to be positively related to shortening of life-span. However, the exact shape of this relationship at low concentrations is not known. Health Canada requires knowledge of such a relationship in order to inform policy decisions including cost-benefit analyses and standard setting.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a statistical method to estimate the relationship between air pollution exposure and years of life lost.
The purpose of this contract is to have the university --- the contractor --- develop computer code using R (CRAN) to implement this method, install and run code at the University of Ottawa on the American Cancer Society Cohort and at Statistics Canada on the Canadian Census Cohort and train selected personal on the use of the computer code and interpretation of the results.
The goal of this contract is to eventually have a model that can predict the relationship between air pollution exposure and mortality.
5. Minimum requirements
Any interested supplier must demonstrate by way of a Statement of Capabilities that it meets the following minimum requirements:
a) must have a statistical method, including a machine learning algorithm, to estimate the relationship between years of life lost due to exposure to ambient air
b) must have access and permission to use the Cancer Prevention II (CPS-II) cohort administered by the American Cancer Society (ACS);
c) must have experience in conducting similar studies in exposure assessment and epidemiology using large databases (i.e. over 90,000 participants);
d) must have written one or more scientific papers on ambient air pollution exposure assessment and effects on mortality using cohort studies that have been accepted and published in a recognized peer-review journal.
6. Reason for non-competitive award
Section 6 of the Government Contracts Regulations contains four exceptions that permit the contracting authority to set aside the requirement to solicit bids. For the proposed procurement, the following exception applies:
(d) Only One Person or Firm is capable of performing the contract.
Dr. Michael Jerrett of the University of California is the only person that has the technical knowledge and expertise to perform this contract and has been given permission by the American Cancer Society (ACS) to access the personal information of the ACS’s Cancer Prevention II (CPS-II) cohort. No other person, group, university, or organization has been given permission to access the personal information contained in this cohort.
7. Applicable trade agreements and justification for limited tendering or the Procurement Strategy for Aboriginal Business
This contract is a health study and therefore is not subject to either the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or World Trade Organization - Agreement on Government Procurement (WTO-AGP). It is however subject to the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT). This requirement is subject to limited tendering procedures in accordance with:
which allows for contracts to be directed to a particular firm when the products or services can be supplied only by a particular supplier and no reasonable alternative or substitute exists.
8. Ownership of Intellectual Property
Copyright shall vest with the Contractor, although the Contractor shall grant the Crown a license to exercise all Intellectual Property Rights in the Materiel for any public purpose.
9. Period of the proposed contract
The contract period shall be from date of contract award until March 15, 2014.
10. Estimated value of the proposed contract
The total estimated value of the proposed contract should not exceed $98,000.00 USD, including travel and living expenses (if applicable), and all applicable taxes.
11. Closing date and time
The closing date and time for accepting Statements of Capabilities is the 4th September 2013, 2 p.m. EST).
12. Contact Person
All inquiries with regard to this Notice must be addressed by e-mail to:
Name: Robert Merrick
E-Mail: R••••••••@•••••.••.ca
