By Calvin Biesecker
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) this week issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for limited production and testing in major United States cities of an autonomous biological monitoring system and network that will replace existing equipment that is labor intensive and slow to warn of potential bio-threats.
Release of the RFP kicks off a potential two phase procurement plan for the Gen-3 program under BioWatch. In the first phase, multiple contractors are expected to receive awards for systems that will allow the Office of Health Affairs (OHA) within DHS to test mature bio-detectors in the laboratory and also in “operationally relevant” scenarios to determine whether the systems are suitable for eventual procurement and deployment, according to the 75-page RFP released on Wednesday.
Field testing under in phase one is projected to be completed by the end of June 2010.
The results of phase one will help determine whether the second phase, which would be a separate procurement, is implemented. Phase two would consist of operational test and evaluation of the Gen-3 production detectors, transition to full rate production, deployment, operations and maintenance.
Potential bidders for the second phase of the Gen-3 effort are not required to participate in phase one, although they would be required to demonstrate that their proposed technology is ready for low-rate initial production, according to the RFP.
DHS says awardees under the contract could receive a maximum of $37 million each over three years if all options are exercised. DHS has $29.3 million available for the first year.
BioWatch began in 2003 and is aimed at providing bio-defense of the country’s civilian population. Currently aerosol collectors are deployed in over 30 major metropolitan areas that collect air samples for daily manual retrieval and laboratory analysis. This process is “labor intensive, costly, and the resultant data is significantly time-delayed,” DHS says. It currently takes up to 34 hours to get a response from a laboratory.
There have been limited deployments in New York City of a Gen-2.5 system developed by Northrop Grumman [NOC] and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that does automated collection, detection and analysis several times a day but is more expensive to operate than what is hoped for under Gen-3 and also doesn’t analyze for the range of pathogens hoped for with the next-generation systems, Bob Hooks, the deputy assistant secretary for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Biodefense at OHA, said last fall.
Under Gen-3, BioWatch would convert to an autonomous network of detectors that continuously monitor the air around the clock for certain biological agents, do automated analysis throughout the day and provided automated alerts via a communications network. DHS is hoping not just for faster results with Gen-3 but lower operating costs as well.
Responses to the RFP for the Gen3 BioWatch program are due next month and an initial demonstration of bio-detection systems is slated for early July.
The RFP had been expected to come out in the first quarter of 2009. The Gen-3 project is already a more than a year behind the original schedule due to the fact that the program requirements are pushing the state-of-the art in bio-detection. The schedule calling for field testing to be done by next June is a year or more later than had been expected last summer (Defense Daily, July 18, 2008).
There will likely be challenges ahead.
“There will be unanticipated bumps in the road in testing,” Jeffrey Runge, the former chief of OHA and now with his own consulting firm BioLogue, told Defense Daily yesterday.
Those challenges include matters such as whether the automated detection systems can actually work in an operational environment and will the assays used in agent testing be suitable in an automated environment, he said. Moreover, how the systems will be deployed and how the concepts of operations are worked out between local and federal officials will have to be solved, he said.
BioWatch is managed by OHA, which is one of the components within DHS and is the principal agent within the department for all medical and health matters. In conjunction with BioWatch, the DHS Science and Technology Directorate has been funding several companies in the development of next-generation bio-detection systems that could become part of Gen- 3. These firms include IQuum, Microfluidic Systems, Inc., and U.S. Genomics. Northrop Grumman has also been advancing the development of its Gen-2.5 system, which is called the Automated Pathogen Detection System.