USDA Sole Source Notice for Wood Beetle Identification and Rapid Sorting Services

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) division located in Raleigh, NC intends to award on a sole source basis a 5-year IDIQ Requirements contract to Carnegie Institute, in Pittsburg, PA under the authority of FAR 6.302-1 and U.S.C. 253( c )(1 ). The agreement is for the rapid sorting, authoritative identification, and specimen-based documentation of exotic wood-feeding beetles and other wood-boring insects to facilitate early detection, eradication, and pest management for the upcoming field collection seasons in a number of eastern U.S. states including Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Carnegie Institute is a nonprofit organization which has performed these services successfully for APHIS since 2007. DETERMINATION AND FINDINGS: The Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH) is the only known credible source for performing this work at the volume specified in a timely manner. CMNH has the staff that is immediately available, trained and capable of full-time activity for handling, storing, sorting, preparing, transferring, curating, identifying, data basing archiving, and as necessary, providing imaging and DNA analysis necessary to resolve or affirm. There are five key personnel available to the Section of Invertebrate Zoology that make this work feasible and credible, a professional systematist/administrator, a molecular/bioinformatics person, and three beetle specialists capable of worldwide identification for a wide range of beetle taxa. CMNH personnel have previously performed the work for PPQ since 2007 in a number of states in the Eastern United States, particularly Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and West Virginia. CMNH delivers identification based on professionally prepared, labeled, and curated specimens from trap samples, thereby rendering those identifications verifiable in the future. Non-prepared, non-target specimens in samples may also be prepared on CMNH budgets, and in any case are preserved in a large sample archive allowing future retrospective study of taxa they may contain that may become problematic in the future. Sample archiving and specimen-based documentation are a trademark of responsible science and a major value-added component of CMNH involvement in this project. Furthermore, CMNH has the requisite resources and equipment on hand to do the job, and is currently engaged in similar and/or complimentary activities for the U.S. Forest Service. Of special note is the exemplary CMNH reference collection of wood-boring beetles, encompassing the majority of both native and exotic species. CMNH also has a world-class library of literature on the identification of beetles, both domestic and foreign. No other service provider with equivalent expertise has been discovered to date that can offer the required identification services. A firm-fixed price IDIQ Requirements contract is anticipated to cover services from 01/01/2019 through 12/31/2023. The total value is not-to-exceed $700,000.00 during the total period of performance. This notice is for informational purposes only. No formal solicitation will be issued. Any questions or inquiries must be e-mailed to the listed point of contact (Michael Chiodi, Contracting Officer, telephone: (612) 336-3203, e-mail: michael.j.chiodi@aphis.usda.gov) by the indicated response date (Thursday, 12/06/2018, 12:00 pm central time).