Contact Points
Primary Contract Specialist
Secondary Contracting Officer
Waltham, Massachusetts
02453-3826, United States
The items and service must be compatible in all aspects (form, fit, and function) with existing systems presently installed. The current equipment – Olympus VS200 Slide Scanning Microscope and the service must coordinate, connect, or interface with the existing system by providing specialized maintenance, service, parts, and repairs.
The Olympus Platinum Service Contract will be critical to the daily operation of the Laboratory of Neuropsychology (LN) and Laboratory of Brain & Cognition (LBC) in performing histological analyses using the Olympus VS200 slide scanning microscope. The NIMH LN/LBC investigators perform experiments in which they need to collect light microscope images of very large amounts of sectioned material. This is frequently of entire brains from marmosets and macaques. The material is cut into sections that may be 20-40 microns thick and mounted onto slides. Depending on the species, the section thickness, and whether all sections or a sampling are used, a brain may create several hundred sections. It may be necessary to image them in either brightfield or fluorescence. Depending on details of the experimental information required, it may be appropriate to image at relatively low magnification (2.5-5X), medium (10-20X), or high (40X) magnification, or to initially image at low magnification and subsequently image selected regions of interest at higher magnification. It may be appropriate to collect images from a single focal plane or to collect images from multiple focal planes at each position.
This level of service contract is critical to the efficient functioning of the Olympus VS200 slide scanning microscope and associated research projects.
The essential characteristics of Evident Scientific/Olympus America Inc. service contract that limit the availability to a sole source are the special features included in the slide scanning microscope specifically tailored to imaging large volumes of brain sections, including fluorescence. Only this suggested source can furnish the requirements, to the exclusion of other sources, because they are the sole manufacturer of the specialized parts and have factory trained technicians who are specifically trained to repair and maintain this system.
The items and service must be compatible in all aspects (form, fit, and function) with existing systems presently installed. The current equipment – Olympus VS200 Slide Scanning Microscope and the service must coordinate, connect, or interface with the existing system by providing specialized maintenance, service, parts, and repairs.
Interested parties may identify in writing their interest and capability in response to this requirement. Responses to this notice shall contain sufficient information to establish the interested parties’ bona-fide capabilities for fulfilling the requirement and include: unit price, list price, shipping and handling costs, the delivery period after contract award, the prompt payment discount terms, the F.O.B. Point (Destination or Origin), the Dun & Bradstreet Number (DUNS), the Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN), and the certification of business size. All offerors must have an active registration in the System for Award Management (SAM) www.sam.gov.
All responses must be received by closing date and must reference the announcement. Responses may be submitted electronically to the attention of the contract specialist. Fax responses will not be accepted.
All responsible sources may submit a bid, proposal, or quotation which shall be considered by the agency.