NOTICE OF INTENT TO SOLE SOURCE This notice is being published in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 5.101 requiring dissemination of information for proposed contract actions. This is a notice of intent to award a sole source contract and is not a request for competitive quotes/proposals. The statutory authority for this sole source procurement is prescribed by FAR 13.501(a).

The National Institutes of Health, National Eye Institute intends to award a sole source, firm-fixed priced purchase order RHEAPLY located at 27 N Wacker Drive #424 Chicago, IL 60606-2800. The National Eye Institute-NIH conducts basic, clinical, and translational research to identify the cellular basis of inherited and acquired eye diseases and develops therapies for treating these blinding disorders to preserve or restore vision in patients. In support of these research activities NEI operates several Core facilities that provide NEI scientists with a wide range of specialized research technology capabilities such as functional imaging, histology, or genetic engineering of animal models. For NEI Core facilities to provide efficient and timely operation of their services they require a sample tracking capability that is both easy to use and access by NEI researchers and also allows Cores to schedule and manage their services internally. In 2019, NEI conducted a proof-of-concept project in which the Rheaply sample tracking software was customized and deployed for NEI’s Histology Core using Rheaply’s existing SaaS product. In 2021, Rheaply started to deploy a custom version of Rheaply on an NEI hosted AWS environment with the goal of making it available to the NEI Histology Core and to other NEI Cores. The Rheaply sample tracking SaaS platform moved into production in March, 2023.

Program areas requires a platform that will help control core facility scheduling and billing, conduct inventory management within scientific groups/labs, and enable sample tracking between investigators and facility managers. This will result in increase efficiency and effectiveness of administrative function within the NIH and improve NIH operation, business process, and coordination. The platform is up and running, now we are requesting a maintenance agreement to keep the platform up and running, with Rheaply system upgrades and troubleshoot if issues occur. The selected vendor was chosen because this is the only vendor that can provide maintenance to this unique system that Rheaply customized for NEI. The core functions are: (1) asset management to be used by administrators, scientists, and other support staff; (2) scheduling, for reserving resources such as equipment and time slots in scientific core facilities; and (3) sample tracking in order to follow samples as they progress through workflow steps in a scientific core facility.

All responsible sources may submit a capability statement demonstrating the ability to provide the requested services, which shall be considered by the agency before the intended award date. Interested sources who submit data are responsible for appropriately marking information if it is proprietary in nature. The Government shall not reimburse interested sources for any information provided. No requests for capability briefings will be honored. 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. Interested vendors must respond to this notice on or before April 21 ,2023 at 1:00 pm Eastern Time by sending your response via email to holleyv@od.nih.gov .

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