A--Submarine Escape, Rescue And Diver Safety Effectiveness Research and Development

NOTE: This BAA replaces BAA-04-02. The Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City (NSWCPC) is soliciting pre-proposals and proposals for applied biomedical research focusing on Submarine Escape and Rescue, and Diving Safety and Effectiveness. The goals of this program are presented in more detail below. It is the intent that this Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) be open for a period of two years from the date of this publication (or until 2/09/2008). However, specified dates are given in paragraph (2) below for submission of pre-proposals and proposals to be awarded within FY 2007 and FY 2008. (1) Primary Interests This program's objective is to focus on Submarine Escape, Rescue, and Diver Safety Effectiveness research that can be rapidly transitioned to fleet capabilities by improving procedures or increasing levels of safety and survivability. The typical project will be two years or less although three year projects are considered. The areas of primary interest in submarine escape and rescue are: (1) extending the capability for rescue under pressure to 5 ATA through; development of rapid methods of disabled submarine (DISSUB) atmosphere assessment, including calculations, to facilitate delivery of equipment and supplies by rescue vehicle to assure breathable atmosphere until able to accomplish rescue (12 - 24 hours); development of novel means to manage oxygen toxicity aboard the pressurized disabled submarine; development of novel means to accelerate or eliminate saturation decompression of survivors; including, but not limited to greater oxygen use and perfluorocarbon (PFC) administration; (2) assuring survival in a disabled submarine (DISSUB) for seven days by evaluation of the adequacy and effectiveness of present stores aboard new classes of operational submarines (SEAWOLF, VIRGINIA, and SSGN); Guard Book guidance and procedures, including, but not limited to pre-escape command organization, le! adership role of senior survivor, acceptance of scheduled order of crew evacuation; utility of medication to reduce the metabolic rate of the crew; impact of starvation, dehydration, sleep deprivation and nitrogen narcosis at 5ATA on decision making and ability to carry out Guard Book directed survival actions and escape; (3) improving understanding and guidance for thermal stress in a disabled submarine by development and evaluation of heat stress curves for time and/or conditions to escape; heat mitigation measures (body cooling) in conditions of increased temperature and elevated CO2 (2.5 - 3%); (4) improving understanding and guidance for surface interval decompression sickness (DCS) risk after saturation dropout or aborted decompression, including, but not limited to; mitigation with various periods of oxygen pre-breathing; (5) evaluating the adequacy of hypothermia protection with present available clothing in combination ; with SEIS suits in SEIS raft; (6) evaluati! ng capability to escape from depths deeper than 600 feet by updating t he safe to escape curves to reflect current knowledge, escape procedures and equipment; identifying necessary compression rates and further escape procedure and equipment changes that are needed; including new classes of operational submarines in the analysis; (7) improving senior survivor decision tools; (8) improving care of escape and rescue casualties within the U.S. Navy Submarine Rescue Diving and Recompression System, including, but not limited to use of block and tackle, winches, and available patient immobilization and stabilization devices for casualty movement from DISSUB into and out of rescue vehicle. The areas of primary interest in diving safety and effectiveness are: (1) development of new decompression models valid across the full spectrum of diving, including single and multilevel dives, repetitive dives, and surface-decompression dives, and which improve safety, reduce decompression time, track nitrogen and helium simultaneously; (2) improving equipment and procedures for contaminated water diving, including, but not limited to development of field-deployable screening tests for biologic and chemical contamination improving laboratory assays for contaminants in salt and brackish water, development of decontamination techniques, including rapid decontamination techniques, that will allow employment of surface decompression tables improving risk assessment and management techniques; (3) Improving understanding of short and long term oxygen toxicity associated with prolonged and repeated exposure to increased partial pressure of oxygen, including, but not limited to! develop an improved probabilistic model to predict the risk of CNS oxygen toxicity; (4) Improving active and/or passive diver thermal protection (both warm and cold) for free swimming and tethered divers to extend effective dive duration and operational performance through improved insulating materials and suit design special protection for hands and feet; (5) Developing and/or refining noise protection exposure limits, monitoring and protection across the full spectrum of underwater sound, including underwater blast and impulse noise; (6) Developing improved procedures for shallow nitrogen-oxygen saturation diving including downward excursion dive capability on helium-nitrogen-oxygen mixtures, aborts from a nitrogen-oxygen saturation dive accelerated nitrogen-oxygen saturation decompression; (7) Developing no-decompression curves for no-stop downward excursion dives on helium-oxygen from helium-oxygen saturation storage depths of 300 feet of seawater and less; (8) Assessm! ent of the long term health of divers, including, but not limited to h earing, dysbaric osteonecrosis, neuropsychological disorders and neuropathies; (9) Improving diagnosis of decompression illness through, but not limited to utilization of algorithms; (10) Electronic recording and archiving of operational dive profiles to develop an operational dive data base; (11) Improving the understanding of the nature of and relationship between patent foramen ovale and the risk of decompression sickness and the utility of neuroimaging studies in the evaluation of divers stricken with DCS or AGE; (12) Investigating the etiology and refining the understanding and mitigation of hypercapnia (CO2 retention or intoxication) in divers during underwater swimming through direct measurement of arterial carbon dioxide tension and cognitive function in immersed exercising divers under pressure, including the effects of inhaled CO2 and increased breathing resistance, development of predictive equations relating end-tidal carbon dioxide tension to arterial tension! as a means to estimate arterial carbon dioxide tension accurately and non-invasively respiratory muscle training; (13) Improving understanding of and developing guidance for the prevention of immersion pulmonary edema; (14) Evaluating compatibility of Chemical Biological Radiological (CBR) prophylaxis medications and diving; (15) Developing real time CO2 monitoring for diver at mouthpiece/oral-nasal mask for use with closed or semi-closed rebreathers. (2) Instructions for Preparation of Pre-proposal and Proposals For FY07, the deadline for submission of pre-proposals is 3:00 PM CST, 17 March 2006 for the funding cycle that begins 1 October 2006, and the deadline for submission of full technical proposals is 3:00 PM CST, 12 May 2006. For FY08, the deadline for submission of pre-proposals is 3:00 PM CST, 16 March 2007 for the funding cycle that begins 1 October 2007, and the deadline for submission of full technical proposals is 3:00 PM CST, 11 May 2007. Proposals received after the due date will be considered only if funds remain available. The format for pre-proposals and proposals may be obtained from the Program Assistant, Lisa Williams at +1 (555) 000-0000 or E-mail: contact@example.gov. The Pre-proposal should be three to five pages of text and should include an estimate of overall costs (including indirect) for each year of the proposed effort. A curriculum vitae of the principal investigator(s) should be appended together with any supporting information, such as reprints or preprints, which will assist in the evaluation of the pre-proposal. Offerors submitting the most promising pre-proposals will be invited to submit a full technical and cost proposal on all or part of their pre-proposal submission. However, any such invitation does not assure a subsequent award. Any offeror may submit a full technical proposal even if its pre-proposal was not identified as promising or if no pre-proposal is submitted; however any full proposal submission would be made without the benefit of feedback prior to full proposal submission. A completed animal use protocol with supporting documentation is required when anim! als are employed. Any proposal that involves the experimental use of human subjects must include a separate evaluation of proposed technical approaches and associated risks by the contractor's committee for protection of human subjects. This evaluation must conform with current Department of the Navy instructions relating to the use of human subjects, DODD 3126.2 and SECNAVINST 3900.39C. Offerors must state in their pre-proposals and full proposals that it is submitted in response to this BAA. This BAA provides no funding for pre-proposals or subsequent proposal development purposes. All pre-proposals will be acknowledged. Proposals will not be returned after evaluation. (3) Criteria for Selecting Proposals, their Relative Importance, and the Method of Evaluation Pre-proposal and full technical proposal submissions will be evaluated on (1) the overall basis of innovation and scientific merit; (2) the relevance to submarine escape, rescue, and diving; (3) the overall value and affordability of the proposal; and (4) the offeror's capabilities, strengths and weaknesses or unique combinations of these that are integral factors for achieving the proposal objectives. The Government reserves the right to select for funding any, all, part or none of the responses received. For efforts funded as contracts, evaluation of the socio-economic merits will include the extent of commitment in providing meaningful subcontracting opportunities for small business, small disadvantaged business, woman-owned small business concerns, and historically black colleges and universities. This is to notify potential offerors that each contract that may be placed under this announcement, or solicitation to an institution of higher education must include the fol! lowing clause: - As a condition for receipt of funds available to the Department of Defense (DoD) under this award, the recipient agrees that it is not an institution that has a policy of denying, and that it is not an institution that effectively prevents the Secretary of Defense from obtaining for military recruiting purposes: (A) an entry to campuses or access to students on campuses; or (B) access to directory information pertaining to students. If the recipient is determined, using procedures established by the Secretary of Defense to implement Section 558 of Public Law 103-337 (1994), to be such an institution during the period of performance of this agreement, and therefore to be in breach of this clause, the Government will cease all payments of DoD funds under this agreement and all other DoD grants and cooperative payments unilaterally for material failure to comply with the terms and conditions of award. If your institution has been identified under the procedures established by the Secretary of Defense to implement Section 558, then: (1) no funds available to DoD may be provided to your institution through any contract, including any existing contract, (2) as a matter of policy, this restriction also applies to any cooperative agreement, and (3) your institution is not eligible to receive a contract or cooperative agreement in response to this solicitation." See instructions above for pre-proposals and proposals. The Government's preference is to award definitive contracts under this BAA. However, an award can be made via grant at the sole discretion of the Government. All responsive sources may submit proposals that will be considered by NSWCPC. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Minority Institutions (MI) are encouraged to submit proposals or join others in submitting proposals; however, no portion of this BAA will be set aside for HBCU and MI participation due to the impracticality of reserving discrete and severable areas of submarine escape, rescue, and diving for exclusive competition among these entities. This announcement constitutes a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) as contemplated in FAR 6.102(d) (2) (i). The Government reserves the right to select for award all, some, or none of the proposals received in response to this announcement. Questions regarding this announcement should be directed to the Contract Specialist identified herein. Technical content questions should be addressed to CAPT John Murray, Deep Submergence Biomedical Development Program Manager, +1 (555) 000-0000. Interested parties are invited to respond to this synopsis. All responsible parties will be considered. POC and address to mail pre-proposals and proposals: NSWCPC, Naval Experimental Diving Unit, 321 Bullfinch Rd., Panama City, FL 32407-7015, Attn: Lisa Williams, Code 02. or E-mail: contact@example.gov. The following additional information is provided: (1) proposals may be submitted by any commercial firm, or institution of higher education (there is no longer a requirement that the entity be U.S. in origin), (2) not withstanding the dates specified in this BAA, proposals may be submitted any time prior to expiration of the BAA, (3) the following e-mail point of contact is provided for information regarding technical programs/technologies of interest within the two areas identified: CAPT John W. Murray (contact@example.gov), and (4) the following e-mail points of contact are provided for information regarding contractual issues: Primary POC - Kathryn Gonzales, (contact@example.gov). Backup POC Ms. Mary F. Hines, (contact@example.gov)