The U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS) intend to award a purchase order for five (5) each of Automatic Liquid Dielectric Tester, P/N OC60D and Test Cell Model No. TCDE (Green w/Flat Electrode), to Hipotronics, Inc. in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation FAR 13.106-1(b). This item is used to measure the breakdown voltage electrical insulating oils and maintain the WSR-88D weather surveillance radars, known as NEXRAD. NEXRAD is a joint program that involves the Department of Commerce (National Weather Service (NWS), Department of Defense (DOD), and Department of Transportation (Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)). This equipment has been approved for NEXRAD by the NWS/ Radar Operations Center (ROC) in Norman, OK. In order to gain the most benefit from the shared resources of the three agencies, like support equipment must be used at all sites. Such commonality reduces procurement, calibration, training, documentation, sparing and repair costs for the following reasons: 1) A minimum of 200 of the above item have been purchase and issued to NWS, DOD, and FAA NEXRAD sites; 2) Equipment is being used by the ROC; 3) The equipment specified will be described in the published NEXRAD maintenance procedures. Alterations of those procedures to accommodate equipment substitutions would be costly and manpower intensive if the manual would have to be re-written and additional test procedures, and redistributed to only the NWS NEXRAD sites; 4) Equipment specified is used at the NWS/Training Center to train maintenance personnel; and 5) Non-standard equipment is more expensive to support the in the Consolidated Logistics Supply system due to the costs to catalog, stock, maintain, and supply multiple items of the same type. This item is being purchased for the National Weather Service (NWS) NEXRAD spare parts program, to be delivered to the National Logistics Support Center located in Kansas City, MO. The proposed contract action was issued as a sources sought notice that was posted on FedBizOpps under Solicitation No. NWWG01401302788 on August 1, 2013, that resulted in only one response to the notice. An award will be issued to Hipotronics, Inc.

 

Bid Protests Not Available