WORTH: 30% of class mark (5% presentation, 25% report)
FORMAT: Response to a Request for Proposal (RFP). The written document should be no longer than 25 pages (with body text single-spaced) including executive summary, table of contents, tables and figures. The presentation should be a 20-minute overview of the written document for the potential client.
PRESENTATION: These will happen…?
REPORT DUE: April 17, 2017. Please email to Sarah in a single file by midnight. Late assignments will be penalized at 10% per day.
RETURN: I will have the reports marked and ready for you to pick up by April 24, 2016. Final marks will be posted on the same day.
Assignment Set-up: Groups and Critical Review
For this project you will work in groups. Each group will work on either the environmental or the occupational scenario. You will choose your own groups and which scenario you would like to work on. Groups may have 2 or 3 members. Please let me know if you are having trouble forming groups.
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Environmental Scenario
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Occupational Scenario
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Each group will hand in one assignment.
Each group will work on their own assignment, but the other groups will be a source of ideas and critical appraisal. You will also do critical reviews of each other’s ideas during class time. To give you a chance to get ideas from everyone, we will also include time to summarize the important elements from each critical appraisal session, to discuss with the whole class.
While you are preparing your assignment and reviewing the other group’s work, please feel free to contact me or the TA (via the listserv is best) about any points of confusion or disagreement.
The two assignment scenarios are described below.
A. Hypothetical environmental scenario
The following scenario is entirely hypothetical.
Recently there have been reports from residents of Toms Lake, British Columbia that water is intermittently spurting from their taps, and the children have been lighting it on fire. All of these complaints come from residents who have private wells on their own property, and initial analyses of water samples from the homes found only one that was positive for methane gas. At the same time, many residents have reported acute and unusual incidents of headaches, nausea, and diarrhea. Many people fear that the tap water and the illnesses are linked, and that both are being caused by hydraulic fracturing wells in the area. The Northern Health Authority is trying to prepare a short- and long-term response to this situation, and have asked for bids to conduct an exposure assessment with the following objectives:
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Please prepare a bid for this job to the Health Authority, with the following details:
- your sampling strategy (discuss all “elements” listed on page 2 of the sampling stategies notes)
- your method of determining the sources affecting exposure levels
- your method for determining compliance (please illustrate this with an example),
- your method of developing a control plan from the data (i.e., not a control plan itself, but how you will use the data gathered to develop one),
- a cost estimate for the work. Prices should include taxes, travel time, travel costs, etc.
- a description of the technical expertise and experience of your company in the area of environmental hygiene
- a maximum one-page executive summary
Please remember that although this Request for Proposal asks for “statistical validity,” the Health Authority will also be interested in the bottom line.
You are welcome to talk to anyone you choose about this scenario. You may find helpful information about locations of hydraulic fracturing wells, local ground water, and water quality guidelines on the web and from local, non-governmental, and government agencies.
B. Hypothetical occupational scenario
The following scenario is entirely hypothetical.
The BC Oil and Gas Commission invites your company’s proposal for consulting services for a project on Health Hazard Exposure Assessment and Control Plan for Hydraulic Fracturing Operations. The objectives of this project are to:
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Please prepare a bid for this job, with the following details:
- your sampling strategy (discuss all “elements” listed on page 2 of the sampling stategies notes)
- your method of determining factors affecting exposure levels
- your method for determining compliance (please illustrate this with an example),
- your method of developing a control plan from the data (i.e., not a control plan itself, but how you will use the data gathered to develop one),
- a cost estimate for the work. Prices should include taxes, travel time, travel costs, etc.
- a description of the technical expertise and experience of your company in the area of occupational hygiene
- a maximum one-page executive summary
Please remember that although this Request for Proposal asks for “statistical validity,” the companies involved will also be interested in the bottom line.
You are welcome to talk to anyone you choose about this scenario. You may find helpful information about locations of hydraulic fracturing locations and WorkSafeBC standards on the web and from companies and other agencies.
Example Strategy
Students often ask for an example of a response to a “Request for Proposal.” I do not have one to offer, though you might be able to get one from an occupational hygiene or environmental consulting firm. Warning: some of them may not be very good.
I do have one example of a research protocol, “A Protocol for Measuring Population Exposures to Malathion during Mosquito Adulticiding using Ground-Based ULV Spraying,” that describes a Sampling Strategy (Section 6). The purposes of the project described in this protocol are very different from the two scenarios this class is working on, so your strategies will not be the same. However, the protocol may be useful to you because it shows the type of thinking that can go into developing a sampling strategy: the objectives, rationale, and how the strategy derives from them.
