Management and Research Support for the Genetic & Rare Diseases (GARD) Information Center & Related Programs   2

INTRODUCTION

PURSUANT TO FAR Subpart 5.2 Synopses of Proposed Contract Actions, THIS IS A PRE-SOLICITATION NOTICE OF A PROPOSED CONTRACT ACTION.

THIS IS A PRE-SOLICITATION NON-COMPETITIVE NOTICE OF INTENT TO AWARD A CONTRACT OR PURCHASE ORDER WITHOUT PROVIDING FOR FULL OR OPEN COMPETITION (INCLUDING BRAND-NAME).

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) intends to award to ICF Incorporated, LLC, 9300 Lee Highway, Fairfax, Virginia 22031-6050, a two-month bridge task order with an estimated value not to exceed $700,000 under General Services Administration Federal Supply Schedule (GSA FSS) Contract Number GS-00F-010CA titled Management and Research Support for the Genetic & Rare Diseases (GARD) Information Center & Related Programs. This will be a Time-and-Materials (T&M) GSA FSS task order with a period of performance of July 29, 2024, through September 28, 2024.
The scope and objective of this acquisition is to continue the day-to-day management of GARD and its inter-related initiatives for an additional two months while a recompetition for a new task order award is completed in a competitive manner. Additionally, this bridge task order will avoid risks that would result from the end of these services. A federally mandated program will cease operation if this project ends abruptly on July 28, 2024, without a new contract in place, because this project currently promotes and encourages a centralized clearinghouse for rare and genetic disease information that provides understandable information about these diseases to the public, medical professionals, patients and families as federally mandated by The Rare Diseases Act of 2002.

NORTH AMERICAN INDUSTRY CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM (NAICS) CODE

The intended procurement is classified under NAICS code 541611 with a small business size tandard of $24.5 million.

REGULATORY AUTHORITY

The resultant task order will include all applicable provisions and clauses of the Federal acquisition Requlation (FAR) in effect through the Federal Acquisition Circular (FAC) 2024-5 with effective date of May 22, 2024.

STATUTORY AUTHORITY
This acquisition is conducted as non-competitive under the authority of FAR 8.405-6(a)(1)(i)(C).

DESCRIPTION OF REQUIREMENT

Background
Since 2003, the Office of Rare Diseases Research (ORDR,) jointly with the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), has funded the Genetic and Rare Diseases (GARD) information program. The program is meant to foster the generation and maintenance of information for and about research on rare diseases, and to stimulate vibrant partnerships with patient groups and other constituencies in the rare disease community.

Currently, there are about 7,000 known rare diseases that affect people in the United States, yet only a few hundred (less than five percent) have a treatment, and even fewer a cure. A disease is characterized as rare when it affects fewer than 200,000 people. While developing treatments for any complex, chronic, and severe disease is challenging, developing treatments for rare diseases presents additional difficulties and has many barriers in the translational development process aimed at treatments.

To this day, accurate, comprehensive, timely, and easy to understand information about a rare disease is difficult to find and is hardly ever available in any one place. It is for these reasons that NCATS supports the GARD information program. ORDR acts as a convener to bring together the rare diseases community to develop a tools collection such as the NCATS Toolkit for Patient-Focused Therapy Development ( Toolkit ) and the NCATS Rare Diseases Registry (RaDaR) Program. The Toolkit Project brings together, on the GARD website, information on the process of developing a high-quality research program and data collections; and helps shepherd more efficiently and successfully projects through the treatment development process.

Purpose and Objectives
The scope and objective of this acquisition is to continue the day-to-day management of GARD and its inter-related initiatives. This includes the NCATS Toolkit for Patient-Focused Therapy Development Project, the NCATS Rare Diseases Registry (RaDaR) Program, NIH-sponsored or co-sponsored scientific gatherings focusing on NCATS rare diseases initiatives, and other initiatives that will evolve as part of this requirement.

For information technology (IT) related areas the NCATS Information Technology Resource Branch (ITRB) is responsible for the operating system(s), databases, applications, system architecture, server, and the security infrastructure provided and/or hosted by NCATS, while the contractor will be expected to be knowledgeable about and support these tasks and/or responsibilities in collaboration with ITRB.

Project Description
A full description is included as Attachment 1 Statement of Work (SOW).

Period of Performance
July 29, 2024, through September 28, 2024.

CLOSING STATEMENT

This synopsis is not a request for competitive proposals; however, all responsible sources may submit a capability statement, proposal, or quotation, which shall be considered by the agency

Responses to this solicitation must include clear and convincing evidence of the offeror's technical capability of fulfilling the requirement. Responses that fail to include relevant technical capability information and all terms and conditions may be assessed as not capable of meeting the requirement.

The respondent must also provide their Unique Entity Identifier (UEI), organization name, address, point-of-contact, and size and type of business (e.g., 8(a), HubZone, etc.), pursuant to the applicable NAICS code and any other information that may be helpful in developing or finalizing the acquisition requirements. All offerors must have an active registration in the System for Award Management (SAM) www.sam.gov.

A determination by the Government not to compete this proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government. The information received will normally be considered solely for the purposes of determining whether to proceed on a non-competitive basis or to conduct a competitive procurement.

All responses must be received by 11:59 AM Eastern Time, July 16, 2024, and reference number 75N95024Q00431.
All responses must be emailed to Mark McNally, Contracting Officer, at mark.mcnally@nih.gov.

All responsible sources may submit a capability statement, proposal, or quotation, which shall be considered by the agency.