Hazardous Material Emergency Telephone Service

The Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), intends to negotiate a firm fixed price purchase order, on a sole source basis, with CHEMTREC a registered service of the American Chemistry Council, Inc., to provide emergency telephone service. When shipping hazardous material, NIST must comply with the code of federal regulations (CFR) including 49 CFR 172.604 and the 29 CFR 1910.1200. These regulations require that NIST provide an emergency telephone contact with each hazardous material that NIST creates and ships. This telephone number must be included on each hazardous material package and each safety data sheet (SDS) which is specific to the hazardous material. The emergency telephone number must always be manned, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year, with hazardous material trained staff. The emergency telephone number is required so that emergency responders at the scene of an incident can call the number and obtain the hazard information related to the package. For more than 13 years, NIST has contracted with CHEMTREC, a registered service of the American Chemistry Council, Inc., to provide emergency telephone service. Since CHEMTREC has provided NIST with emergency telephone service for the more than 13 years, the CHEMTREC emergency telephone number has been placed on all NIST SDSs generated over the past 13 years. These include SDSs for thousands of standard reference materials (SRM) and chemical samples generated by NIST staff. If NIST were to switch to a different emergency telephone service provider, NIST would have to update the emergency telephone number on all existing SDSs at NIST. This would require: editing each individual SDS file, processing each SDS through review, archiving the previous and current versions of the SDS, posting the new SDSs to the SRM web site, posting the new SDS to the systems that print out an SDS when a hazardous material is shipped, and coordinating all existing SDSs with the new telephone service provider. This would be cost prohibitive to NIST to change service providers. In addition to the added costs, changing service providers would result in additional risk to NIST, and NIST's colleagues and customers. By changing service providers, NIST SDSs that have been distributed for the past 13 years would now have an inaccurate emergency telephone number. It would be impossible to recall and replace all of the SDSs produced in the past 13 years. If one of these SDSs was consulted in an emergency, the wrong emergency telephone number would be called. The emergency responders would not receive appropriate hazard information, and this could result in unnecessary injury. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for this acquisition is 562421, and the size standard is $16.5 Million. No solicitation package will be issued. This notice of intent is not a request for competitive quotations; however, interested persons may identify their interest and capability to respond to this requirement. The Government will consider responses received by 12:00 p.m. (EST) on April 27, 2020. Inquiries will only be accepted via email to [email protected]. No telephone requests will be honored. A determination by the Government not to compete the proposed acquisition based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. Information received will normally be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement in the future.