H146-- NEW Critical SPS Water Testing Milwaukee VAMC and Green Bay CBOC

Who will provide the bottles for specimen testing? The vendor will supply all bottles, tubes, cold packs, packaging and any other material supplies needed to perform and ship the specimens to maintain sample viability. Regarding the Perry Johnson Laboratory Accreditation (PJLA)Testing Accreditation and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 17025:2017 certifications, We have the A2LA Laboratory Certification, Elite Laboratory and the ASSE International Certification. Our questions is: Do we have to have the PJLA or is the Certifications that we have for testing sufficient? We will let the verbiage in the original documents stand. PJLA certification is required. Would the VA like us to incorporate an SOP for the SPS?. This would not be a need as part of the contract. 4. To make sure hold times are not exceeded in the event of shipping samples, will sampling in the afternoon be acceptable? Sampling in the afternoon is acceptable provided it does not delay delivery to the lab or interfere with maintaining appropriate chain of custody. 5. Can you please confirm the parameters needed to be tested monthly for the first point of generation critical water chemistry panel with micro. ST108 outlines all of the testing parameters. If the vendor is not aware of these testing parameters, the vendor likely lacks the knowledge or experience to adequately perform critical water testing. Please see attached document for the ST108 standard. 6. are field tests acceptable for pH, Alkalinity, conductivity, and hardness or will these need to be done by a Lab? Final results need to be conducted through lab analysis. 7. Does the Lab have to have PJLA certification or is another ANSI recognized auditing body such as ANAB acceptable for ISO certification? PJLA certification is required. 8. The solicitation states results must be password protected, does this apply only to the database where results are stored, or do emails need to be encrypted? Emails do not need to be encrypted. The web-based reporting structure should be password protected. 9. Clarification on how many of the tests are being run prior to the UV?  UV treatment is continual in our critical water loops, with the exception of the cart washer loop at the Green Bay facility, where there is no UV treatment.