Active

Contract Opportunity

The Government hereby submits a notice of intent to award a sole source firm fixed price contract for Maintenance Service Agreement for Maurice and Jess scientific equipment to PROTEINSIMPLE (UEI: NGMABAHGS6N9). Please see Justification for Other than Justification for Other than Full and Open Competition Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 13.5.

This is NOT a request for quotes or proposals. The determination not to compete this proposed contract action is solely within the discretion of the Government. Information received will normally be considered for the purposes of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement. The Government will not be responsible for any costs incurred by responding to this notice. Questions or comments to this Notice of Intent should be directed to Contracting Officer, Kim Yen Tu , at kimyen.n.tu@usda.gov via e-mail only (no phone calls/voice mail messages).

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United States Department of Agriculture

Sole Source/Brand Name Justification

Exceeding the Simplified Acquisition Threshold - FAR 13.5

1. Identification of the agency and the contracting activity.

Requesting Agency:

USDA, APHIS, NVSL and CVB

1800 Dayton Avenue

Ames, IA 50010

Contracting Activity:

USDA, APHIS, MRPBS, ASD

Minneapolis Procurement Branch

Butler Square, Fifth Floor

100 North 6th Street

Minneapolis, MN 55403

2. The nature and/or description of the action being approved.

Due to the circumstances described below, the APHIS, Center of Veterinary Biologics (CVB) Program requires the following service to be acquired using a noncompetitive procurement in support of program mission requirements.

3. Description of the supplies or services required to meet the agency’s needs (including the estimated value).

This procurement includes the purchase of the Biotechne-ProteinSimple maintenance/service plan (Jess-3549; Jess- 3995, and Maurice- KF-1875).

The services to be performed includes: calibration services for the system; annual preventive maintenance for the system; software up-grade/instrument updates; unlimited on-site service, Repair Service - Non-consumable Parts, Labor, Travel; Phone/Remote Support, and use of loaner instrument if on-site repair cannot be achieved.

The total estimated cost for this 5-year annual contract is about $235,000. This estimate is based on historical costs for the procurement of Biotechne-ProteinSimple maintenance/service plans. The cost is inclusive of the service as well as travel for the technician to the lab, all parts, shipping, and technical assistance by field application scientists related to troubleshooting errors.

4. The statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition.

The following circumstance justifies the exception to sole source/brand name under FAR 13.5:

41 U.S.C § 1901 - Simplified Acquisition Procedures up to $7.5 million, as authorized by FAR 13.500(a) and implemented by FAR 13.501(a).

5. Statement demonstrating the unique qualifications of the proposed contractor or the nature of the action requiring the use of the authority.

FAR 13.5 is the proposed authority as ProteinSimple (Biotechne) is the sole manufacturer of the instrument and the only company in the market approved to perform the maintenance on Jess and Maurice machines. The Jess and Maurice equipment are used to qualitatively and quantitively analyze antigen in master seed viruses and/or master seed cell lines. Jess instruments are also used to confirm potency of our Stakeholder’s pre-license serials. The Jess and Maurice instruments allow CVB to uphold the mission of the Virus Serum Toxin Act and the 9CFR by evaluating and interrogating characteristics of antigens that are used to produce animal biologics. Without servicing and calibration of the instrument, CVB personnel do not have confidence that results of carefully thought-out experiments, are accurate. This could put industries’ animal biologic products at risk for licensure, delaying prevention or treatment of relevant animal diseases. Loss of the Jess and Maurice instrumentation would increase CVB testing times, therefore, increasing time to licensure and availability of products to the veterinary community. Therefore, ProteinSimple is the only source from which this requirement may be satisfied, and which meets the factual test for the use of the exception cited above.

6. Description of efforts made to ensure offers are solicited from as many potential sources as is practicable.

Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements. Biotechne-ProteinSimple is the sole source and vendor of these services.

Purchase of service contracts through a third-party vendor-Government Scientific- is possible as they have most of the ProteinSimple catalog items, however, they were not able to match the discounted contract price for all 5 years and are only an intermediary between CVB and ProteinSimple as they still only use ProteinSimple Field Application Engineers. Therefore, this service contract should be sole source as ProteinSimple has the only authorized Field Application Engineers to service and calibrate these instruments.

7. Description of the market research conducted and the results or a statement of the reason Market Research was not conducted.

A search in accordance with FAR Part 8 resulted in finding no other source for servicing the ProteinSimple Jess and Maurice instruments. Open market research revealed that truly the only vendor capable of furnishing the requirements, to the exclusion of other sources, as Biotechne-ProteinSimple has employees that are authorized and trained to maintain the equipment, as well as access to the proprietary software required for the software up-grade/instrument updates.

Biotechne- ProteinSimple company provided a sole source document stating they are the only company qualified to service the instruments they built and sold. See above statements in regard to a third party offering services but actualy still contract through ProteinSimple.

8. Any other facts supporting the use of other than full and open competition.

Propriety equipment that requires proprietary software upgrades/updates.

9. Listing of the sources, if any, that expressed a written interest in the acquisition.

N/A

10. Statement of actions, if any, the agency may take to remove or overcome any barriers to competition if subsequent acquisitions are anticipated.

Due to the equipment being proprietary and requiring proprietary software updates, no additional actions can be taken at this time to remove or overcome barriers to competition.

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