Quality Control Services

Sources Sought Notice NIST-MML-20-SS08Project Title:  Quality Control ServicesThis is a Sources Sought Notice ONLY.  Requests for copies of a solicitation will not receive a response. This Notice is for planning purposes only and is not a Request for Proposal or Request for Quotation or an obligation on the part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for conducting a follow-on acquisition.  NIST does not intend to award a contract on the basis of this Notice, or otherwise pay for the information requested.  No entitlement or payment of direct or indirect costs or charges by NIST will arise as a result of submission of responses to this Notice and NIST use of such information.  NIST recognizes that proprietary components, interfaces and equipment, and clearly mark restricted or proprietary components, interfaces and equipment, and clearly mark restricted or proprietary data and present it as an addendum to the non-restricted/non-proprietary information.  In the

absence of such identification, NIST will assume to have unlimited rights to all technical data in the information paper.NO SOLICITATION DOCUMENTS EXIST AT THIS TIME.Requirement:NIST is seeking information on contractors who can provide the following:Mass spectral quality control services for peptide mass spectra and tandem and electron ionization mass spectra.Incorporating spectra in data libraryDetermination of false discovery rates and score thresholdsEmploying commercial and publicly available peptide identification software as well as customer developed softwareMass spectral quality control services of tandem and electron ionization mass spectraWork packages originated from laboratories or from contributorsQuality control methods will follow established methods for peptide mass spectra as published in the following NIST paper on spectral quality determination:Lam, Henry, et al. “Building consensus spectral libraries for peptide identification in proteomics.” Nature Methods, vol. 5, no. 10, 2008, pp. 873-75. Quality control methods will follow established methods for EI and tandem mass spectra as published in the following NIST papers on spectral quality determination:Ausloos, P., et al. “The critical evaluation of a comprehensive mass spectral library.” Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, vol. 10, no. 4, 1999, pp. 287-99.Wallace, William, et al. “Mass Spectral Library Quality Assurance by Inter-LibraryComparison.” Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, 2017 Jan 26Qualifications of Personnel: For the key personnel:  Including degrees and experience in the measurement of MSD by GC-MS and/or LC-MS-MS; experience in analyzing and interpreting mass spectral data; and experience working with mass spectral libraries. Education completed in foreign colleges or universities may be used to meet the minimum educational requirementInterested parties shall describe the capabilities of their organization as it relates to the service described above.  NIST anticipates issuing a Request for Quotation in the third quarter of  FY2020, and awarding a contract no later than the fourth quarter of FY2020.NIST is seeking responses from all responsible sources, including large and small businesses. The small business size standard associated with the NAICS code for this effort, 541715, is 1000 employees. Please include your company’s size classification and socio-economic status in any response to this notice. After results of this market research are obtained and analyzed, NIST may conduct a competitive procurement and subsequently award a contract.  Companies that can provide such services are requested to email a written response describing their abilities to donald.graham@nist.gov no later than the response date for this sources sought notice.The following information is requested to be provided as part of the response to this sources sought notice:Name, Address, DUNS number, CAGE code, and point of contact information of your company.Any information on the company’s small business certifications, if applicable.Description of your company’s capabilities as they relate to the services described in this notice.A description of your company’s previous experience providing the services described in this notice.Indication of whether the services described in this notice are currently offered via your company’s GSA Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) contracts, Government-wide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs), or other existing Government-wide contract vehicles; and, if so, the contract number(s) for those vehicles.Any other relevant information that is not listed above which the Government should consider in finalizing its market research.Responses are limited to a total of twelve (12) pages. The responses must be in MS Word format.  Pages shall be 8½-inch x 11-inch, using Times New Roman 11 Point Font.  Each page shall have adequate margins on each side (at least one inch) of the page. Header/footer information (which does not include any information to be analyzed) may be included in the 1" margin space.