Provision of Remote Ground Vehicle for Enhanced HAZMAT Response

Previously known as the Melbourne Fire Brigade, Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV) was newly established on 1 July 2020 as part of Victoria’s Fire Services Reform where MFB merged with part of the CFA. The Fire Rescue Victoria Act 1958 is available on the Victorian Parliament’s Legislation and Bills website.

We serve and protect communities across Melbourne and Victoria’s major regional centres with 85 FRV stations located across the state; 47 fire stations in metropolitan Melbourne and 38 regional stations. Most regional stations are co-located with CFA volunteer brigades.

We respond to fires, complex rescues, road crashes, emergency medical calls and hazardous chemical spills.

Our people are highly trained and ready to respond to emergencies across Victoria, Australia, and the world, working as one in the emergency services sector.

FRV are seeking responses to this Request for Tender (RFT 21/021) for the Provision of one or more Remote Ground Vehicles for Enhanced HAZMAT Response.

The RGV will be a remotely operated ground vehicle that can be deployed quickly from a Hazmat vehicle to carry out rapid reconnaissance, providing situational awareness to Hazmat Technicians, informing the response. This will include visual data (situational overview, reading container labels, placards or signage, thermal imaging for hot spots) and air monitoring data at a minimum. Hazmat incidents may include working in corrosive and toxic environments (hot zone), and the materials of construction should be suitable for these conditions. The RGV will not be operated in a flammable environment.

It is expected that the RGV will be stowed in the existing Hazmat appliance, preferably without requiring physical modifications, and will be easily deployed by one or two people. The RGV should be able to be deployed within 10 minutes of arrival if required and will be operated by Hazmat Technicians from a safe location (cold zone).

The RGV must be operable from at least 100 meters Line of Sight, pass through a standard doorway, and negotiate obstacles such as gutters, hose lines, cables and pallets. The RGV must support wireless live video streaming cameras including day/low light vision capability and thermal imaging. The RGV must be designed to carry FRVs current detectors, streaming the data back to the cold zone. The air monitoring intake must be able to be moved up and down on an extendable pole or arm to obtain data at different levels. The RGV will be used at incidents up to and exceeding 4 hours duration.

The control mechanism for driving the RGV should be simple, the control panel must display information from the equipment on board in a format that is easy to interpret and accessible to store and mirror in real time to additional remote displays (computers or other devices).

The communication of the data from the detector to the operator could be by either the on-board communications feed streaming back to the control panel, or by using radio frequency (RF) modems currently deployed by FRV for air monitoring. It is a requirement that the data is streamed live back to the operator so that the data can easily be correlated with the location/visual information of the RGV.

Tender Briefing

There will be a Tender Briefing held for this sourcing acitvity via TEAMS on 5 August 10am. You must rgister your interest in attanding by emailing through the COMMUNICATIONS tab on eProcure.

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The questions are contained within the response area. They are required to be completed online. To progress to the area of the online questions, follow the following steps-

1. Click on the invitation title

2. At the bottom of the page, click on "intend to respond" button.

3. On the newly displayed page, click the "response" (grey tab).

4. On the next page, click the response button under the completion bar.

5. A new screen will be displayed, click the start button on the bottom right-hand side and all questions and attachments will be provided for you to complete through the portal.

NOTE: Make sure you complete the questions as directed and save your work on a regular basis to avoid data loss. You can download a copy of your submission PRIOR to the closing date and time.

IMPORTANT- SUPPORTING INFORMATION MUST BE ATTACHED TO EACH RESPECTIVE QUESTION AND NOT UPLOADED UPFRONT AS YOUR RESPONSE.