•The General Services Administration has commissioned a prominent architect-engineering firm to build a new 100-square-foot research building for NASA in Cleveland. TEN Arquitectos — with offices in New York City and Mexico City — won the $3.3 million contract, though the overall project has a maximum value of $20 million. The company recently finished an $85-million futuristic project for Rutgers University Business School.
•The Navy is studying ways to help soldiers work more efficiently, even when sleep deprived. A $150,000 study conducted by Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama will keep subjects awake for 40 continuous hours and give some a glucose mixture while others drink a placebo. The hope is that the solution counteracts a glucose imbalance in the brain’s prefrontal cortex that occurs when people miss sleep, which “compromises cognitive performance predicated on self-control.” The Navy says that, if the tests are successful, “glucose supplementation would offer a safe, inexpensive, and fast-acting” way to combat fatigue and “represent a necessary step toward a comprehensive approach to fatigue mitigation.”
{mosads}•The Forest and Wildlife Service needs help disposing of the toxic chemicals within secret drug labs that the government confiscates on federal lands. The contract award documents don’t have a cost associated with them, but environmental consultant and emergency response company AAG Environmental will be tasked with safely removing the hazardous waste found across nine counties in Florida. The contractor will essentially be on-call to help the agency and law enforcement officials as needed, and documents say they need to “either immediately address the Forest Service initial call, or to return an initial call within 15 minutes.”
•The Food and Drug Administration is spending more than $700,000 on an outside lawyer to help them sift through thousands of regulated products to evaluate which ones are being sold illegally and come up with a way to evaluate them for approval or have them removed. The work will involve “requesting voluntary compliance; providing notice of action in a Federal Register notice; issuing an untitled letter; issuing a warning letter; or initiating a seizure,” the contract documents state. “Each of these actions is time-consuming and resource intensive.” Thus, New Hampshire attorney Barbara Alkalay will be assisting the FDA with that process.
Contract information compiled from General Services Administration data and government press releases. Send announcements about government contracts to mwilson@digital-stage.thehill.com.