1.2 - Statement of Requirements
1.1.1 This Request for Quote (“RFQ”) is an invitation to prospective Proponents to submit Quotes for the provision of two Wearable (portable) Metabolic system.
1.1.2 Our project involves the evaluation of physiological responses of children to older adults (up to the age of 85 years) with and without chronic disease exposed to extreme heat during rest and physical activity. The trials involve a combination of both field and laboratory exposures to different living and working conditions (simulated for laboratory trials) during heat exposure. The work involves assessing the heat stress response from the cellular to whole-body response, which includes quantifying the level of heat strain via direct (use of our world’s only air calorimeter) and indirect (i.e., skin blood flow, sweating, body temperatures) methods. Critical to our assessment of the human heat stress response is our ability to measure metabolic heat production as estimated by the rate of energy expenditure and external work performed. Altogether, the data generated from this work will be used to generate heat action measures that include heat warning systems, emergency response plans, maximum indoor temperature standards, and other heat adaptation strategies as well as the development of technologies for the management and monitoring of heat strain tailored to specific population groups.
1.1.3 General Description:
We are seeking to purchase an ultralight metabolic system that will permit the remote, unobtrusive monitoring of oxygen consumption which we will employ to quantify a person’s rate of metabolic heat production (see above). The unit must be capable of functioning in very harsh, hot, humid environments in both a laboratory and field-based settings. In the context of the latter, it will be used to conduct field measurements of different populations groups in a free-living environment (i.e., children at play, the elderly in a long-term care facility) as well as workers in different occupations (e.g., miners working at depth, electric utilities workers maintaining energized power lines).
This instrument will be used for both laboratory and field-based work.
