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RFP Develop Future Climate Datasets and Prepare Training for Local Practitioners

Request For Proposals

General Information
Country:   Canada
City/Locality:   Ontario
Notice/Contract Number:   can:186113
Publication Date:   Nov 17, 2009
Deadline:   Dec 4, 2009
Buyer:   Ministry of Government and Consumer Services, Ontario Shared Services Supply Chain Management Goods & Services Procurement Branch
Original Language:   English

Contact Information
Address:   Fred Pedosiuk, Procurement Advisor
300 Water Street 3rd, Floor North Tower
Peterborough, ON K9J 8M5
Canada
Telephone:   (000)000-0000x000
Fax:   (705)755-5111
Email:   Click here

Goods, Works and Services

 

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RFP Develop Future Climate Datasets and Prepare Training for Local Practitioners

This Tender / Request for Proposal (RFP) is available only through MERX, the electronic tendering system used by the Province of Ontario. For further information about MERX, call 1-800-964-6379 or visit the MERX website at www.merx.com.

A Proponent who has not obtained this Tender / RFP through MERX will have its proposal disqualified unless a third party has requested this Tender / RFP from MERX on that Proponent's behalf and that Proponent has identified the third party on the Label of its proposal. If a Proponent who has obtained this Tender / RFP from a third party fails to identify that third party in this manner, that Proponent's Tender / Proposal will be disqualified.

Proponents who intend to respond to this procurement opportunity are requested not to cancel the receipt of addenda or amendments, since they must obtain through MERX all of the information documents that are issued through MERX.

In the event that a Proponent chooses to cancel the receipt of addenda or amendments their subsequent bid / proposal submission may be rejected.


INTRODUCTION

Invitation to Proponents
This Request for Proposals ("RFP") is an invitation to prospective proponents to submit proposals to develop future climate datasets and prepare training for local practitioners, as further described in Part 2 - The Deliverables (the “Deliverables"). This RFP is issued by Her Majesty the Queen in right of Ontario as represented by the Minister of Natural Resources (the “Ministry").

Type of Contract For Deliverables
The selected proponent will be required to enter into an agreement with the Ministry for the provision of the Deliverables in the form attached as Appendix A to this RFP. It is the Ministry’s intention to enter into the Form of Agreement attached as Appendix A to this RFP with only one (1) legal entity. The term of the agreement is to be for a period of three (3) months with an option in favour of the Ministry to extend the agreement on the same terms and conditions for an additional term of up to three (3) months. It is anticipated that the agreement will be executed on or around December 2009.

A proponent who submits conditions, options, variations or contingent statements to the terms set out in the Form of Agreement, either as part of its proposal or after receiving notice of selection, may be disqualified.

No Guarantee of Volume of Work or Exclusivity of Contract
The Ministry makes no guarantee of the value or volume of work to be assigned to the successful proponent. The Agreement executed with the successful proponent will not be an exclusive contract for the provision of the described Deliverables. The Ministry may contract with others for the same or similar Deliverables to those described in this RFP or may obtain the same or similar Deliverables internally.

Agreement on Internal Trade
Proponents should note that procurements falling within the scope of Chapter 5 of the Agreement on Internal Trade are subject to that chapter but that the rights and obligations of the parties shall be governed by the specific terms of each particular tender call. For further reference please see the Internal Trade Secretariat website at www.ait-aci.ca/

Contractor Security Screening
Upon notification from the Ministry, the Supplier shall require any employee, agent or sub-contractor engaged in the performance of the services to undergo a Security Clearance.

Upon notification, any selected Supplier shall be required to provide the necessary information for each individual requiring security clearance by the Security Services and Contingency Planning Branch (SSCPB) of the Ontario government. If applicable, clearance checks must be completed before the Supplier and the Ministry enter into the Agreement.

Reference is made to Appendix G – Security Clearance Checks for further information, including samples of the forms that will be required when security clearance checks are required.

Definitions
Unless otherwise specified in this RFP, capitalized words and phrases have the meaning set out in the Form of Agreement attached as Appendix A to this RFP.

“Ministry Contact” means: Fred Pedosiuk
Facsimile No.: (705) 755-5111
Email: fred.pedosiuk@ontario.ca

“Supplier” means the proponent that has been selected as a result of the RFP process and has executed the agreements as required as well as providing all other required documentation.

THE DELIVERABLES

Background

The Ontario government has introduced the Clean Water Act, 2006 to protect drinking water at the source, as part of an overall commitment to human health and the environment. A key focus of the legislation is the production of locally developed, science-based source water assessment reports and protection plans. To prepare the assessment report, teams of representatives from the watershed community will work together at the local level (e.g. municipalities, conservation authorities, water users, land owners, and the provincial government). Representation on these teams will vary depending on local needs.

As part of the assessment report the water budget and water quantity risk assessment process outlines the steps to: 1) estimate the quantity of water flowing through a watershed, 2) understand the pertinent processes and pathways water follows, and 3) assess the reliability of water supply sources from a quantity perspective. The goals of this assessment are to identify watershed communities where the reliability of water supplies is questionable and to highlight key factors that may limit the reliability, such that appropriate risk management activities can be completed.

After developing a conceptual water budget understanding, a three-tiered approach provides the framework for the water budget and water quantity risk assessment, with each tier being more detailed with greater certainty than the previous. This tiered approach will guide watershed communities to complete the degree of assessment consistent with local water quantity issues. In areas where the availability of water far outweighs the demand, a simplified approach (Tier 1) may be sufficient for decision-making and further efforts are not required. Highly developed areas that obtain their water supply from local resources may require significantly more advanced and detailed assessments (Tiers 2 and 3). Detailed assessments are focused on better quantifying the availability of water for water supply and the consumptive water demand.

Through the development of progressively detailed water budgets, historical climate trends are also evaluated (both temperature and precipitation) as they are critical inputs to these models. Changes in these trends result in impacts on the availability of the water resource. In response to concern for the potential impacts of climate change on water resources, the assessment report for each region must include a qualitative overview of climate change initiatives or degree of understanding undertaken to date. This is required by the technical rules.

The quantification and assessment of potential impacts of climate change on water resources at the local scale could be undertaken utilizing the water budget tools developed for the water budget and water quantity risk assessment and applying climate change scenarios documented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their 2007 report. To evaluate the impact of these scenarios, a current baseline of recent climate must be developed followed by the generation of future local climates. Several methods for generating the future local climates include: 1) Global Climate Model (GCM) change fields, 2) Statistical Downscaling, 3) Weather Generators and 4) use of Regional Climate Models.

In order to support climate change assessments at the local level, technical expertise and training is required for the local practitioners undertaking the water budget and water quantity risk assessments. A significant amount of data manipulation and knowledge is required to first develop an appropriate baseline of recent climate and then generate future local climates. This process could be optimized if undertaken by experts in the field of climate change and have experience with the generation of climate datasets (using the methodologies indicated above). The future local climates could be generated on a regional basis (and distributed to local conservation authorities) to be used with the local water budget tools for climate change assessment.

To further support this initiative, training on how to incorporate the future climate datasets into water budget tools will be provided to technical staff undertaking climate change assessments.

Objectives

To effectively meet the objectives of this project, the Request For Proposals (RFP) is seeking technical consulting expertise in the area of climate change assessments, hydrologic modeling and an extensive understanding of current climate change science.

The objectives of this project are two-fold. The first objective is to generate, and then distribute, future climate datasets on a regional basis. The second objective is to introduce the concepts of climate change, the methodologies and models to user groups through interactive workshops.

The objectives will be met two ways:

The generation of a suite of regional future climate datasets using methodologies documented in the IPCC (2007) report. These datasets will then be distributed to Conservation Authority partners and other interested users for use in climate change assessments and,
The development of a training package and delivery of training workshops to be offered at four locations across the Province (central, southwest, east, north). These workshops will provide the participants with an understanding of the status of climate change science, methodologies and models used. These training sessions will use case studies to demonstrate climate change assessments, how to interpret the modeled results and recommend a standardized approach for presenting the results to a broader audience.


Deliverables

To achieve the objectives, this project will proceed in two phases.

Phase 1 will require the supplier to generate the future climate data sets.

Phase 2 will require the supplier to conduct an education and outreach program including four regional training sessions.

PHASE 1 – GENERATION OF REGIONAL FUTURE CLIMATE DATASETS

Phase 1 Start-up Meeting

The Supplier will:

Plan a half-day management team meeting, with MNR, to discuss deliverables and develop a project schedule to complete the work by March 2010.
In consultation with MNR, establish a 5 person project steering committee that will include MNR, MOE and a Conservation Authority representative


Background Review of Climate Change Material

The Supplier will:

Undertake a review of climate change assessment work that is currently being conducted in Ontario.
Review existing datasets generated through the water budget process
Review any other datasets that may be complimentary to existing water budget climate datasets
Review methodologies recommended by the IPCC for generating future climates from current climate periods. Methodologies are to include:
Change field methods using Global Climate Model (GCM) output
Regional Climate Model (RCM) output applied directly;
Modeled output using a calibrated weather generator (WG) and
Statistical Downscaling (SD) output using a calibrated SD model.
Compile a summary of materials reviewed and deliver to management team
Prepare a project plan for generating the future climate data sets based on background review and deliver to project steering committee

Generation of Regional Future Climate Data Sets

The Supplier will

Obtain and process current regional climate data sets for use in generation of future climate data sets
Generate regional future climate data sets using at a minimum the following methodologies outlined in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2007) report.
Change field method using Global Climate Model (GCM) output;
Regional Climate Model (RCM) output applied directly;
Modeled output using a calibrated weather generator (WG) and
Statistical Downscaling (SD) output using a calibrated SD model.
In consultation with MNR, select another method not identified above.

Produce a document that describes in detail, the methodologies used to generate the future climate datasets. The intent of this summary is for use as supporting documentation that will be made available to potential users of the future climate datasets. This document will include a case study that clearly demonstrates all processes undertaken to generate the datasets and how they are to be incorporated into existing groundwater and surface water models.
Hold a full day meeting at Peterborough with the management and steering committees to present the results of the generation of the future climate data sets as well as the results of the case study. The intent of this meeting is also to allow the committees to ask questions of the methodology and provide comments on the document.
Respond to all comments provided by the management and steering committees and incorporate any changes into the document
Package the generated regional future climate datasets into Excel format for easy distribution to all potential users.
Submit digital copies of the future climate datasets and summary document to MNR at the completion of this phase of the project.


PHASE 2: EDUCATION AND OUTREACH

Phase 2 Start-up Meeting

The Supplier will:

Plan a half-day Phase 2 start-up meeting at Peterborough, with the management team and steering committee established in Phase 1, to discuss deliverables and project schedule.

Development of Training Material

The Supplier will:

Develop the training session agenda based on work completed in Phase 1.
Develop a training package for workshops. All materials are to be developed using Microsoft PowerPoint software.
Develop workshop content that will include:

Background information and the state of climate change science
Discussion of how the future climate datasets were generated
Discussion of sources of climate information that users can access
Demonstration using a case study, of how to incorporate the future climate datasets into existing groundwater and surface water models
Practical exercises that allow the users to input the appropriate future climate dataset into their own hydrologic models
Detailed discussion of how to interpret the results of the modeled output
Discussion and recommendations on preferred methods of communicating the modeled results to a broader (non-scientific) audience.

Supplier will present the training material to the steering committee, in the form of a ‘dry run’ in advance of training sessions to obtain feedback and address any issues/gaps or questions prior to delivering the session to training session participants.
Deliver training sessions at four regional locations (Sudbury, Kingston, London and Toronto) to Conservation Authority partners and other interested users.
Develop a digital feedback form for participants and compile the responses received and provide the information back to MNR.
Provide one digital copy of the training materials, list of participants and any questions or comments that arose from the training session for future use back to MNR at the completion of Phase 2 of the project.






Original notice
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