Green Jobs & Healthcare Impact Study

NOTE: This RFI is a combination of the two previously posted RFI: DOL-RFI-2010-1001, Random Assignment Impact Evaluation and DOL-RFI-2010-2002, High Growth/Health Care Evaluation. The U.S. Department of Labor has decided to combine the two procurements. The U.S. Department of Labor is seeking qualified contractors to conduct a random assignment evaluation of the impacts on participants post-program employment and education outcomes of training provided under grants awarded with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds under the Green Jobs Solicitations for Grant Applications (SGAs) and the High Growth/Health Care SGA. The Green Jobs grants were awarded in January, 2010, under three SGAs: the Energy Training Partnerships grants, the State Energy Sector Partnership and Training grants, and the Pathways Out of Poverty grants. The High Growth /Health Care grants were awarded February, 2010. The SGAs can be found at http://www.doleta.gov/grants/2009grants.cfm, and the announcements of awards can be found at: http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/eta20100177.htm and http://www.dol.gov/dol/green/. The Green Jobs and High Growth / Health Care evaluation will involve five to ten grantees. It will track the study sample for at least three years from the point of random assignment, and will take approximately five years to complete. ETA is conducting market research to identify firms that qualify under the Small Business Programs mentioned in Federal Acquisition Regulation Subpart 19. The NAICS Code is 541611, and the Small Business Standard is $7 million. The contractor will be responsible for estimating the impacts of the training provided by the grantees on participants post-program earning, employment and certification outcomes, overall and for key subgroups. Activities undertaken as part of this contract include, but are not limited to, developing the evaluation design, collecting and analyzing data (including administering a large-scale survey), convening meetings, preparing analytical reports, and providing briefings to executive-level federal staff. The contractor must be able to design an appropriate, rigorous, and feasible random assignment impact evaluation; execute the evaluation; and prepare reports based on the data analysis. All contractors responding to this announcement must demonstrate their experience in successfully doing the aforementioned work. Please be advised that the following factors will be used to gauge the capability of a firm who responds to this request for information. Therefore, a firm's capabilities statement should address: 1) Serving as lead investigator for developing a design for a large-scale multi-part random assignment impact study; 2) Providing in-house administration of a CATI survey to a minimum of 4,000 respondents, with a minimum of an 80 percent response rate; 3) Designing and conducting an implementation evaluation to support a random assignment impact study, including focus groups, site visits and qualitative analysis; 4) Developing documents to support the Paperwork Reduction Act clearance process; 5) Implementing strategies to minimize attrition in longitudinal impact evaluations; 6) Analyzing and synthesizing qualitative and quantitative data for a large-scale multi-part random assignment impact study; 7) Developing a high-quality final evaluation report on a large-scale multi-part random assignment impact study; 8) Designing and administering random assignment as part of an impact evaluation involving 4,000 subjects (treatments and controls), at a minimum, including experience and ability to receive, handle, protect and dispose of data that may contain personally identifiable information, as pertains to federal regulations, the Privacy Act, FERPA, etc.; and 9) Serving as the primary or lead presenter in oral briefings to executive-level staff. All interested parties are invited to submit a capabilities statement, to Ms. Dayle White, Contract Specialist, Division of Contract Services, 200 Constitution Avenue, NW, Room N4655, Washington, DC 20210. Responses are due June 25, 2010, by 4 p.m. EDT. Electronic copies of capability statements are preferred and may be emailed to white.dayle@dol.gov. The response must be specific to each of the factors listed above to demonstrate that the respondent is capable. The submittals shall not exceed 15 pages, TOTAL. A determination by the Government to proceed with the acquisition as a set-aside is within the discretion of the Government. Please be advised that telephone inquiries will not be accepted. PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL.