--SPECIAL ADVANCE SYNOPSIS FOR AIR, MARINE, AND GROUND-BASED COMMUNICATIONS, NAVIGATION, AND SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGIES

NA NAICS 541690 This serves as a special advance notice to potential vendors for the Communications, Navigation, and Surveillance (CNS) solicitations. The Volpe Center will be issuing two solicitations for multiple award contracts for services related to air, marine, and ground-based communications, navigation, and surveillance systems and technologies for the Department of Transportation and other Federal Agencies. Each solicitation will result in the award of two distinct groups of Multiple Award Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity contracts. One solicitation will be issued as a 100% small business set-aside. The small business set-aside will be issued on or about May 21, 2003. The small business set-aside will include the following specific areas of CNS: 1. Radio Frequency Engineer ing Technology, 2. Aircraft Surveillance, 3. Airport Operations, 4. National Airspace System Engineering and Implementation, and 5. Air Traffic Management. The full and open solicitation will be issued on a full and open competitive basis on or about May 15, 2003 for the following areas of CNS: 1. CNS Strategic Planning and System Engineering, 2. Traffic/Fleet Management and Control Systems, 3. Navigation Systems, 4. Sensor and Surveillance Systems, 5. Guidance and Control (G&C) Systems, 6. Communication Systems, and 7. Automation and Display Systems. The primary skill requirements of the CNS contracts focus on engineering and physical science disciplines including: systems engineering and integration, electronic engineering, electrical engineering, aeronautical engineering, mechanic al engineering, operations research, industrial engineering, environmental test engineering, physics, chemistry, and meteorology. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code for the acquisitions is 541690 and the small business size standard is $6.0 million. Availability of any formal solicitation will be announced separately. This is only a special advance notice for the two separate solicitations for business planning purposes to assist potential vendors. The official synopsis will be issued for each solicitation in approximately one week. A pre-proposal conference will be held at the Volpe Center on approximately June 11, 2003. The exact date will be included in each solicitation document upon issuance. Do not submit any proposals or other information at this t ime. Availability of any formal solicitation will be announced separately. This is NOT a request for proposal (RFP), invitation for bid (IFB), or an announcement of a solicitation, and no solicitation package exists at this time. The Government will not pay for any materials provided in response to this synopsis and submittals will not be returned to the sender. For future information about the Volpe Center refer to the Volpe Center website at http://www.volpe.dot.gov.