Provision of Aircraft Meteorological Data Relay (AMDAR) data to the MSC

An Advance Contract Award Notice (ACAN) allows departments and agencies to post a notice, for no less than fifteen calendar days, indicating to the supplier community that it intends to award a good, service or construction contract 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 competitive requirements of the government’s contracting policy have been met. Following notification to suppliers not successful in demonstrating that their statement of capabilities meets the requirements set out in the ACAN, the contract may then be awarded using the Treasury Board’s electronic bidding authorities.

If other potential suppliers submit statements of capabilities during the fifteen calendar day posting period, and meet the requirements set out in the ACAN, the department or agency must proceed to a full tendering process on either the government’s electronic tendering service or through traditional means, in order to award the contract.

The Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) intends on entering into a contract with Jazz Aviation LP for the provision of meteorological data (AMDAR) to supplement the upper air data obtained using weather balloons so as to improve the quality of the weather models used in public and marine forecasts and warnings as well as services to NAV CANADA and National Defence.  Use of the aircraft data provides more diverse geographic and temporal sampling than is possible using balloons alone.

Jazz Aviation LP is presently a unique supplier of this data, has the required instrumentation and software, and a history of providing timely data which meets international data specifications for quality and reliability.  Jazz further meets MSC needs since they operate in many remote communities in Canada on an ongoing basis, particularly in areas where MSC has very sparse upper air data.  

MSC will, under the proposed contract, pay Jazz $0.033 U.S. per kilobit of data plus a 10% administration fee making it one of the most economical arrangements of this nature in the world.  This charge rate will allow Jazz to recover the incremental expenses they incur with their data communication service provider rather than being a profit-generating contract for them.  The value of this arrangement is estimated to be roughly $500K over five years starting April 7, 2014.  

Suppliers who consider themselves fully qualified and available to provide the services described herein, may submit a statement of capabilities in writing to the contact person identified in this Notice on or before the closing date of this Notice.  The statement of capabilities must clearly demonstrate how the supplier meets the advertised requirements.