The US House of Representatives is soliciting bids on a new co-located data center facility. The new data center would serve both the House and a number of US government agencies as needed, including the Library of Congress, US Capitol Police, Congressional Budget Office, Government Accountability Office (GAO), and Government Printing Office.

The House’s Chief Administrative Office filed the official request for proposal (RFP) earlier this week, on Oct. 27, and is requesting all bidders that meet its requirements submit proposals by 2 PM Eastern on Nov. 25, 2014.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the RFP is the location requirements of the new data center. The proposed facility must be between 300 to 350 miles from Capitol Hill in Washington DC, 100 miles or greater from the nearest coast line, and 100 miles or less from the nearest military installation. Sprinkle in proximity requirements for rail/interstate highway access, police, and fire rescue facilities, and what’s left are likely slim choices for location – with the wisest bets coming on potential locations in Virginia, followed by Central or Western Pennsylvania.

Among the facility and technical requirements, the House proposal requires the facility be designed, built and maintained per the Uptime Institute’s Tier III or Tier IV specifications. Additional notable requirements include providing “hot aisle” containment, rack power of 5kW – 20kW, 24/7 environmental monitoring of data center and critical infrastructure, and that the proposed facility not reside within a known flood plain.

The House’s RFP also requests a 100% service level agreement for availability on the proposed data center facility, with graduated penalties if the contract recipient does not provide 100% power and availability uptime during the contract period.

The security requirements for the contract proposal are pretty straightforward for government work. They include 24/365 armed security, 24/365 access by authorized personnel, and auditable biometric access control for the data center facility. Potential bidders must also be able to achieve and sustain NIST-800 standards for computer security and risk management throughout the life of the contract, in addition to passing annual internal US House audits using the NIST-800 standards.

Because this will be a co-located facility, providing data center operations for government departments other than the US House, the RFP requests that potential bids provide co-location cage assemblies for each agency and also be able to provide sub-allocation of space as needed by agency, with each cage space access being controlled with auditable biometric access.