Scientific and Technical Engagement Partnership (STEP 2.0)

The proposal submission deadline is extended to 11:00 Eastern Standard Time (EST) Monday, 08 July 2024. Offerors who may have already submitted information to this solicitation are able to update their submissions and provide them to the Government by the new extended proposal due date. All Offerors are reminded to review the proposal submission instructions in Section L, to include the requirement to submit through PIEE.14-Jun-2024 update: The Government has reviewed and responded to all questions received in response to the original solicitation. As a result of some of the questions received, the Government made the decision to amend the solicitation. Therefore, attached please find the questions and answers to all questions received, along with Amendment 0001 to the solicitation. The amendment documents consist of the amendment, the conformed version of the solicitation, and revised versions of Attachments L1, L5 and L6. The proposal submission deadline is unchanged from the original solicitation. The Scientific and Technical Engagement Partnership (STEP 2.0) represents the follow-on effort to the majority of the requirements that fell under the STEP 1.0 contract HDTRA117C0019 with Leidos, Inc., which ended in November 2022. A sources sought notice was previously published on www.sam.gov related to the effort on 05 August 2021 under HDTRA121R0046. A Virtual Industry Day was held between 19 to 21 October 2021 after being announced on www.sam.gov. Then, a draft Request for Proposals (RFP) was posted on the Procurement Integrated Enterprise Environment (PIEE) Solicitation Portal with a cross posting on www.sam.gov on 11 July 2023 under HDTRA123R0003. The notice ID for STEP 2.0 has since changed to reflect the intended solicitation number of HDTRA124R0042. STEP 2.0 builds from the previous STEP effort, continuing to advance the BTRP mission by establishing and leveraging a robust pool of scientific and technical expertise to efficiently and effectively execute planned and emerging BTRP requirements. BTRP utilizes international engagements to promote science and technical collaborations with partner nations; regional and international organizations; and the global scientific community to foster and maintain ethical, constructive, and sustainable partnerships that address health security threats. STEP 2.0 activities promote best practices in biological safety and security; improve partner countries? capabilities to safely, rapidly, and accurately detect and report infectious diseases; and establish and enhance international partnerships. The purpose of STEP 2.0 is to establish a network of biosurveillance and biorisk management (BRM) expertise spanning a variety of domestic and foreign collaborators and sectors, including academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, scientists, mentors, and commercial entities. The Government is hereby releasing the STEP 2.0 solicitation as a request for proposals (RFP) under FAR Part 15 with the goal of awarding a single, standalone contract to one vendor. The RFP consists of the solicitation document, solicitation attachments and bidders library (BL) reference documents, all of which are attachments to this posting.