Modification of the air pollution–mortality relationship by synoptic scale weather types: a Canadian national-level cohort study

HEALTH CANADA ADVANCE CONTRACT AWARD NOTICE

TITLE: Modification of the air pollution–mortality relationship by synoptic scale weather types: a Canadian national-level cohort study

SOLICITATION NUMBER: 1000164959

1. The purpose and explanation of an ACAN

An Advance Contract Award Notice (ACAN) allows Health Canada contracting authorities to post a notice on the Government Electronic Tendering System (GETS), for no less than fifteen (15) calendar days, indicating to the supplier community that a good, service or construction contract will be awarded to a pre-identified contractor. If no other supplier submits, on or before the closing date, a Statement of Capabilities that meets the requirements set out in the ACAN, the contracting authority may then proceed with the award. However, should a Statement of Capabilities be found to meet the requirements set out in the ACAN, then the contracting authority will proceed to a full tendering process.

2. Rights of suppliers

Suppliers who believe that they are fully qualified and available to provide the services or goods described in this ACAN may submit a Statement of Capabilities clearly demonstrating how they meet the advertised requirement. This Statement of Capabilities must be provided via e-mail only to the contact person identified in Section 12 of the Notice on or before the closing date and time of the Notice. If there is a reasonable level of evidence regarding capability, the requirements will be opened to electronic or traditional bidding processes.

3. Proposed Contractor

Chris Hebbern, PhD 418 Hinton Avenue South Ottawa, ON, K1Y 1B3

4. Definition of Requirements or Expected Results

The contract requires modeling the relationship between ambient air pollution and cause-specific mortality using a large Canadian census-based cohort, identifying and adjusting for variables that can modify mortality risk, and additionally identifying the effect of synoptic scale weather types on the relationship. Outputs include database linkages, code, and publications to be submitted for peer review.

• Identify airsheds and climate zones across Canada based on prevailing synoptic seasonal normals; develop and manage databases linking this synoptic weather type data with the CanCHEC datasets.

• Generate risk estimates from distributed lag non linear models of the delayed effects of weather type exposure on mortality.

• Generate risk estimates of the short term effects of synoptic weather on mortality, incorporating socioeconomic data, pollution, and weather data.

• Convert and prepare datasets for Cox proportional hazard models.

• Provision of all R code used to generate and apply the aforementioned tasks.

• Prepare manuscripts for internal review and publication in peer reviewed journals.

5. Minimum requirements

Any interested supplier must demonstrate by way of a Statement of Capabilities that it meets the following minimum requirements:

a) The supplier must have a PhD and three to five years of post-doctoral experience in the field of environmental epidemiology

b) The supplier must have experience (at least 3 years in the last 5 years) conducting and publishing statistical analyses of time series data, as well as proven expertise in the analysis of large administrative health datasets.

c) The supplier must have experience working with proprietary datasets managed by Statistics Canada.

d) The supplier must have current access to and use of the Canadian Census Mortality Follow-up Study cohort, administered by Statistics Canada, including Deemed Employee status at Statistics Canada and access to Statistics Canada datacentre.

e) The supplier must have experience (at least 3 years in the last 5 years) conducting and publishing advanced statistical modeling in the field of environmental epidemiology, with expertise in the following: distributed lag non linear modeling, Cox proportional hazards regression, time series analysis, and general linear modeling.

f) The supplier must have experience (at least 3 years in the last 5 years) conducting and publishing epidemiological research using R software.

g) The supplier must have a federal government Reliability Status security clearance.

6. Reason for non-competitive award

Section 6 of the Government Contracts Regulations contains four exceptions that permit the contracting authority to set aside the requirement to solicit bids. For the proposed procurement, the following exception applies:

(d) Only One Person or Firm is capable of performing the contract.

Chris Hebbern, the proposed supplier, meets all the minimum requirements described above. He has four months experience already working on the project under the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) postdoctoral fellow/collaborator program, generating the R code required for linking databases and statistical analyses. He is a “Deemed Employee of Statistics Canada” and, as such permitted to access the Canadian Census cohort datasets. Additionally, he has several years’ experience researching and publishing in the field of environmental epidemiology, and has developed spatial synoptic classification datasets derived from daily weather parameters that will be used in the project. While there may be others that have equal experience in conducting statistical analyses of time series data and Cox analyses,etc., expertise in analysis of large administrative health datasets and linking of synoptic weather type data with such data is much more rare. In fact, given that this is an emerging field of research, the contractor is expected to be one of the very few with experience working in this field. This, coupled with the requirements to access Statistics Canada secure databases and to readily understand the R code already developed, may make the proposed contractor uniquely qualified to perform the work.

7. Applicable trade agreements and justification for limited tendering or the Procurement Strategy for Aboriginal Business

This contract is a health study and therefore is not subject to either the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or World Trade Organization - Agreement on Government Procurement (WTO-GPA). It is however subject to the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT). This requirement is subject to limited tendering procedures in accordance with:

- AIT, Article 506.12 (b).

which allows for contracts to be directed to a particular firm when the products or services can be supplied only by a particular supplier and no reasonable alternative or substitute exists.

8. Ownership of Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property shall vest with the Contractor, although the Contractor shall grant the Crown a license to exercise all Intellectual Property Rights in the Materiel for any public purpose.

9. Period of the proposed contract

The contract period shall be for about 10 months beginning from the date of contract award until August 31, 2015.

10. Estimated value of the proposed contract

The total estimated value of the proposed contract should not exceed $80,000.00, including all applicable taxes.

11. Closing date and time

The closing date and time for accepting Statements of Capabilities is 23rd of October 2014, 2 p.m. EDT).

12. Contact Person

All inquiries with regard to this Notice must be addressed by e-mail to

Name: Robert Merrick E-Mail: Robert.Merrick@hc-sc.gc.ca