Presolicitation Notice for Tower Maintenance IDIQ

The Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) program is a tri-agency joint effort of the Department of Commerce (DOC), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Department of Transportation (DOT). The operational user agencies involved are: DOC, National Weather Service (NWS); DOD, United States Air Force (USAF); and DOT, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The NEXRAD Program has deployed 160 operational and 2 non-operational (training, test, and repair) towers supporting the Weather Surveillance Radar - 1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) weather radar systems throughout the United States and various overseas locations. Currently only NEXRAD radar sites operated by the DOC and DOD are participating in this tower restoration contract. DOT has an internal depot team conducting tower maintenance on their towers.

The WSR-88D Radar Operations Center (ROC) has support management responsibility for these radars for the tri-agency NEXRAD program. Part of the support management responsibility associated with these radars is the maintenance of the tower structure in a fully operational condition to ensure the mission of the tri-agency radar network can be continuously met. Timeliness of tower repairs, both routine as well as catastrophic failure recovery, is critical to the successful completion of the NEXRAD mission.

Since the WSR-88D tower is a rigid structure which supports the critical transmit and receive equipment, the structural integrity of the tower must be maintained to ensure the availability of weather radar data under all circumstances. Factors such as corrosion, loose fasteners, damaged structural components or tower foundations, and others can contribute to the weakening of the tower system and may result in failure of the system to perform its lifesaving function. It is necessary to periodically inspect the soundness of the tower at all WSR-88D sites, which are constantly exposed to the environmental extremes. It may be necessary to conduct impromptu inspections of radar towers, which have been damaged or suspected to have been damaged by a catastrophic event. Additionally, some towers are located at remote mountainous sites with severe weather environments where the wind and ice loading are excessive. These sites are only accessible at certain times of the year for a limited period of time and require frequent maintenance. Timeliness of inspection and subsequent repair are critical in these situations to restore the WSR-88D tower to its original operational condition. WSR-88D radars must be 96% operationally available in order to meet the diverse meteorological missions of the NEXRAD tri-agency partners.

The Government does not own complete data rights associated with the WSR- 88D Tower. The design and engineering data for the WSR-88D Towers are the proprietary property of Valmont-Microflect (CAGE: 29189). The Government does have data rights to the unique as-built drawings for each tower and detailed bills of material for each tower configuration. The Government has available, a set of installation drawings and detailed bills of material to reconstitute any tower height contained within the WSR-88D network for both the Limited Phase Production and Full-Scale Production configurations. These drawings contain references to all Valmont-Microflect part numbers and parts/quantities required to install any tower configuration in the NEXRAD network. All necessary data and drawings currently available to the government will be provided following the contract award.

The Government will establish an IDIQ contract to issue task orders for the following services:

NWS NEXRAD WSR-88D Radar Tower Maintenance in accordance with the terms and conditions contained herein, attached Performance Work Statement (PWS), and applicable Department of Labor Wage Determination(s). 

Task Orders issued under this contract may include any of the following contract line items (CLIN): 
CLIN 0001 Tower Inspection and Engineering Evaluations for the NWS NEXRAD WSR-88D Radar Towers.    
CLIN 0002 Structural repair, replacement and restoration of galvanic coating for the NWS NEXRAD WSR-88D Radar Towers.     
CLIN 0003 Engineering data and engineering change proposal coating for the NWS NEXRAD WSR-88D Radar Towers.