Question:

Answer:

What were the significant factors governing your decisions on key issues in developing this request for proposals?

Factors considered in developing the RFP were technical
requirements for magnet uniformity, reliability, and
manufacturability. Cost, including the means for ensuring
adequate price competition for production of magnets after
engineering development is completed, was also a factor.

Question:

What are the criteria that will be used to determine selection?

Answer:

The detailed selection criteria have not yet been determined, and
will not be fixed until the draft criteria are commented on by
industry. However, this engineering development contract is a
technical competition; as such, price will not be scored, but
will be part of the overall integrated assessment. Production
magnets will be purchased through firm fixed price bids.

Question 3: Please discuss the development of detectors for the SSC.

Answer:

At present, the program is in a research and development (R&D)
and proposal preparation stage. A generic R&D program to
investigate basic issues of detector performance was initiated in
FY 1989 and will continue into mid-FY 1991. That program is
funded currently at an annual rate of about $6 million. A
detector subsystem R&D effort focusing on the design and testing
of subsystems that might be appropriate for SSC experiments was
initiated in FY 1990. This program is being funded at a level of
about $10 million now and is expected to grow in FY 1991.

Question: What is the status of any request for proposals in this matter?

Answer:

The Laboratory will receive expressions of interest (EOI) from groups interested in proposing SSC experiments on May 25, 1990. These EOI's will be reviewed by the SSC Laboratory's Program Advisory Committee (PAC) on July 14-20, 1990. The PAC will meet again on November 1-3, 1990, to begin to identify the areas of physics to be pursued in the initial set of experiments, make further recommendations on the subsystem R&D and the EOI's, and discuss the due date for proposals. Selection of the first round of experiments will involve an on-going process of review by the PAC of the R&D being done by the various collaborations involved.

Question:

Answer:

What role will be available to foreign firms in this work?

The detectors will be large, complex and sophisticated
instruments. Large international collaborations of scientists
are now forming, and they will submit in May 1990 so-called
Expressions of Interest to the SSC Laboratory for scientific peer
review. These will lead to detailed proposals that will also be
peer reviewed and specific detectors approved to be built. The
collaborations will be composed of scientific groups from many
institutions. These groups will each furnish specific pieces, or
subsystems, of the detectors. The U.S. groups will be largely
funded with Federal monies and will follow the standard
procurement processes. The foreign groups, using funding from
their own governments, will procure their contributions to the
detectors following their standard practice, presumably much of
it coming from purchases within their own country.