J046--Installation and Maintenance for Water Monitoring System at the Bedford VA Medical Center

Amendment No.: 0001

Solicitation No.: 36C24126Q0489

Date: July 27, 2026

Purpose of Amendment

The purpose of this amendment is to provide responses to questions submitted regarding the solicitation. As a result of these questions and responses, the response due date remains unchanged.

1. Question: The bid indicates that the awarded contractor must use the PhiAnalytics platform by Phigenics. This is proprietary to them, it’s unlikely they would allow another company to access this. Would be acceptable to provide our own equipment and our own comparable analytics platform for this bid?

Answer: The equipment/analytics platform would have to fulfill the same requirements from VA Directive 1061, as cited in the SOW. The contractor’s equipment must be water monitoring equipment rather than water treatment equipment, able to operate above 124 °F and fully installed using copper plumbing.

The analytics platform would need to be reviewed/evaluated to ensure it is independent of the water monitoring equipment and offers comparable services like continuously updated data with auto-trending and cloud-based data management to ensure various required staff on site can access real-time data.

The contractor would be responsible for taking out and disposing of the existing system as they are correct, it is all proprietary.

2. Question: Pursuant to FAR 11.104 and FAR 52.211-6, could you please identify the salient physical, functional, and performance characteristics that an equal hardware and software solution must meet?

Answer: An equal hardware unit must be suitable for continuous water quality monitoring on a potable water system. They need to be installed on the supply cold & hot lines as well as the distal locations (pipe chases) across 7 patient care buildings. The unit shall be able to operate in temperatures at or above 124 °F, monitor pH, monitor residual biocide (as low as 0.001 ppm) and take instantaneous readings if needed, monitor turbidity, and monitor pressure. All data from the monitored parameters shall be instantaneously uploaded to the equal software.

An equal software unit must provide continuous data logging, ‘out-of-range condition’ detection & an immediate alert mechanism delivered to multiple staff, store historical water quality data according to VA cybersecurity requirements (VA 6500.6), data compilation for compliance reporting (tables, figures), and automatic data trending to track system performance. Staff shall be able to set custom control limits for the monitored parameters.

3. Question: Given the installation, repair, calibration, maintenance, and technical support requirements of this procurement, would the VA reconsider the assigned NAICS code and amend the solicitation to use NAICS Code 811310?

Answer: The NAICS Code will not be changed. The overall scope of the requirement does not fall under NAICS Code 811310.