Commercial Safety Data Sheet Authoring Software

Description

Contracting Office Address

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST),

Acquisition Management Division,

100 Bureau Drive, Mail Stop 1640,

Gaithersburg, MD, 20899-1640

This is a Sources Sought Notice ONLY.  Requests for copies of a solicitation will not receive a response. 

This Notice is for planning purposes only and is not a Request for Proposal or Request for Quotation or an obligation on the part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for conducting a follow-on acquisition.  NIST does not intend to award a contract on the basis of this Notice or otherwise pay for the information requested.  No entitlement or payment of direct or indirect costs or charges by NIST will arise as a result of submission of responses to this Notice and NIST use of such information.  NIST recognizes that proprietary components, interfaces and equipment, and clearly mark restricted or proprietary components, interfaces and equipment, and clearly mark restricted or proprietary data and present it as an addendum to the non-restricted/non-proprietary information.  In the absence of such identification, NIST will assume to have unlimited rights to all technical data in the information paper.

NO SOLICITATION DOCUMENTS EXIST AT THIS TIME.

Background:

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) supports accurate and compatible measurements by certifying and providing over 1300 Standard Reference Materials® with well-characterized composition or properties, or both.  Industry, academia, and government use NIST SRMs to facilitate commerce and trade and to advance research and development.  The United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Hazard Communication Standard (HCS), 29 CFR 1910.1200, requires that manufacturers classify the hazards of the chemical products they produce.  Additionally, manufacturers must provide information about the classified hazards of their chemical products to downstream users by developing and providing Safety Data Sheets (SDSs) and “shipped” container labels.  The HCS provides specific requirements regarding the hazard classification process and the required content and format for SDSs and “shipped” container labels for “hazardous chemicals” (as defined in the HCS).  The HCS chemical manufacturer requirements also apply to “laboratories” (as defined in OSHA 29 CFR 1910.1450, Occupational Exposure to Hazardous Chemicals in Laboratories) when the hazardous chemicals will be shipped from the laboratory workplace.  The NIST’s Office of Reference Materials is responsible for producing Safety Data Sheets for hazardous chemical SRMs and samples shipped from NIST, with a projected demand of 600+ custom SDSs per year. 

Requirements:

NIST is seeking information from sources with the following capabilities:

1. Cloud-hosted software that creates a Draft SDS according to OSHA Hazard Communication Standard (HCS), 29 CFR 1910.1200, when a chemical composition is entered in the system using Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) numbers and percentages for each of the components.
   • Automatically pull information from database(s) that contain relevant physical, chemical, and health information (data, end points, etc).
   • Automatically calculate Acute Toxicity Estimates, based on the composition entered.
2. Demonstrate its data comes from OSHA’s key and recommended sources of information related to health effects, physical and chemical properties, as outlined in OSHA Publication 3844 “Hazard Communication: Hazard Classification Guidance for Manufacturers, Importers, and Employers.”
3. Unlimited number of authored SDS.
4. Access to unlimited CAS numbers for organic/inorganic substances, alloys, coordination compounds, minerals, mixtures, polymers, salts, etc.
5. Two or more concurrent users in the system.
6. Users’ input on the classification before the draft is completed

Interested parties shall describe the capabilities of their organization as it relates to the product described above.  NIST anticipates issuing a Request for Quotation within 120 days of this post’s closing.

NIST is seeking responses from all responsible sources, including large and small businesses. The small business size standard associated with the NAICS code for this effort, 518210, is $40M. Please include your company’s size classification and socio-economic status in any response to this notice. 

After results of this market research are obtained and analyzed, NIST may conduct a competitive procurement and subsequently award a contract.  Companies that can provide such services are requested to email a written response describing their abilities to donald.graham@nist.gov no later than the response date for this sources sought notice.

The following information is requested to be provided as part of the response to this sources sought notice:

1. Name, Address, Unique Entity Identifier (UEI), CAGE code, and point of contact information of your company.
2. Any information on the company’s small business certifications, if applicable.
3. Description of your company’s capabilities as they relate to the service described in this notice.
4. A description of your company’s previous experience providing services described in this notice.
5. Indication of whether the service described in this notice are currently offered via your company’s GSA Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) contracts, Government-wide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs), or other existing Government-wide contract vehicles; and, if so, the contract number(s) for those vehicles.
6. Any other relevant information that is not listed above which the Government should consider in finalizing its market research.

Responses are limited to a total of twelve (12) pages. The responses must be in MS Word format.  Pages shall be 8½-inch x 11-inch, using Times New Roman 11 Point Font.  Each page shall have adequate margins on each side (at least one inch) of the page. Header/footer information (which does not include any information to be analyzed) may be included in the 1" margin space.