Accountability of Personnel during Evacuations and Crisis Situations

U. S. House of Representatives, Sergeant at Arms Office of Emergency Management

Summary

The United States House of Representatives (House), Sergeant at Arms Office of Emergency Management (SAAOEM) is seeking assistance in developing and implementing an integrated technological solution for accounting for building occupants immediately following building evacuations and crisis situations and, during the immediate 24-hour period thereafter, the status of all House building occupants (Members, staff, contractors/vendors and (possibly) visitors).

Description of Desired Services and Assistance

SAAOEM is seeking contemporary information, and current state-of-the-art mechanisms that provide a reliable, robust, and rapid accumulation of real-time operationally accessible data concerning the status of evacuated personnel:

1. who have gathered in assembly areas
2. who are dislocated from the Capitol campus during evacuation events but need to report their status
3. who have traveled or are in transit to a secondary location, or are out of the local area and need to report their status

Ideally, proposed systems/products would also provide a near real-time, 3-D graphical, GIS display of building evacuation/occupancy for Incident Commanders and Emergency Operations Center staff.

Due to the sensitive nature of data being collected, data security is absolutely essential for any product to be considered acceptable.

For the purpose of this request, the SAAOEM desires a comprehensive approach to accountability that allows for short-term and long-term accountability processes to be examined:

The overall purpose of this approach is to provide timely information to law enforcement officials and SAAOEM/House emergency managers as to building evacuation status and relative safe-status of employees, for use in tactical and strategic decision making by these officials during emergency conditions.   Such data may also be used by first responder personnel to assist in determining the use of on-scene emergency resources.

Short-Term accountability: Systems and mechanisms that assist in identifying and accounting for staff that have (or have not) evacuated the building.  The systems and mechanisms being sought, should achieve accountability/status reports, of affected building(s), within sixty (60) minutes of the evacuation/crisis event. 

Long-term accountability:  Systems and mechanisms that assist in recalculating and augmenting the short-term system, which, within a 24-hour period of time, accepts input from varying sources (telephone calls, email or web-based responses, Blackberry/Smartphone check-in, etc.) and refines initial reporting to provide a complete picture of the status of all House building occupants.

The ability to connect/link with systems already in place may be necessary.  Additionally, proposed systems need to have the ability to be located and hosted on SAAOEM servers or at a secure offsite location.

Proposed systems should allow end users (individuals) the ability to update certain fields regarding their contact information, while remaining fields will be controlled by a select group of administrators.

Specific Demographic Data

USHR is located in downtown Washington, DC.  The facilities housing USHR consist of 4 main office buildings, the United States Capitol building, and other smaller buildings clustered in an urban area encompassing an area of 0.8 square miles.  Approximately 13,500 employees work for the USHR within these facilities.

Information Submittal details

Interested parties may submit written responses by COB Friday September 2, 2011. There is no specific limitation on overall maximum volume/size of submittals.  With regard to all submittals, an executive summary of no more than 12 pages should be included.  Details of individual systems described should be no more than 4 pages.  Submittals should include examples of systems currently available to support the above specified operations, to include known locations where they are in use.  Multiple systems may be proposed to meet the various needs specified, if appropriate.  Budget cost estimates should include separate specification of purchase, implementation and maintenance/sustainment costs.  New design efforts to meet the needs may be submitted, however currently available systems are preferred.  All responses should include Company name, address, telephone number, point of contact, e-mail address and company web-site, if available.

Submittals may be mailed to:

Sergeant at Arms Office of Emergency Management

441 2^nd Street SW

192 Ford House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

Or submitted via email to [email protected]