VA looks to expand asset management system
By
Nick Wakeman
VA has published a sources sought notice looking for ways to maintain and expand an asset tracking system keeping tabs on hundreds of thousands of items.
Veterans Affairs is looking to expand asset tracking at several of its facilities in the Midwest.
The Veterans Integrated Service Network 10 deployed an enterprise-side real-time location system in 2011 and now wants to expand it to include the facilities it picked up when VA merged VISN 10 and VISN 11 in 2015.
VISN 10 wants to bring the capabilities of the system – known as VISN 10 Real time Locating System – to several facilities in Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana.
The system has three distinct applications: asset tracking, RFID-enabled cardiac cath lab supply cabinets and sterile processing workflow. VISN 10 has put all of these together in a software package and centralized user interface.
Vet-Fed Resources Inc. built the system under a $34.8 million contract it won in 2011, according to Deltek.
On the Vet-Fed website, they describe how the system has 78,000 passive RFID tags and follows 190,000 surgical instruments, 35,000 items in the cardiac cath labs, and 153 handheld devices. The system also is monitoring 450 staffers and provides workflow management.
In a new sources sought notice, VA is looking for maintenance services as well as expanding the system to the new facilities that were part of VISN 11.
Each of the new facilities is using a different technology to locate assets.
While the RFI doesn’t specifically say what vehicle VA might use, it does mention the need to comply with parts of their large Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology Next Gen contract.
Responses to the RFI are due Feb. 3. The solicitation number is VA11817N1871.