Opinion ID: 2795702
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Solicitation

Text: The National Institutes of Health (“NIH”) operates twelve Centers of Excellence in Pain Education (“CoEPEs”) to “develop pain management training and educational resources for medical, dental, nursing, and pharmacy students to advance the assessment, diagnosis, and safe treatment of pain.” Palladian, 119 Fed. Cl. at 420-21. On February 28, 2014, NIDA published the solicitation at issue as a total small business set aside. The purpose of the solicitation was to fund a “Coordination Center,” operated by the contractor, “to facilitate the activities of the CoEPEs.” Id. at 421. The solicitation identified seven tasks the contractor was required to perform. Specifically, it provided that the contractor would: (1) prepare and submit monthly progress reports; (2) “maintain, host and manage an interactive online communication portal” for NIH, the contractor, and the CoEPEs to use; (3) “coordinate the process by which CoEPEs submit their materials to be used in the development of cases,” “facilitate NIH Pain Consortium evaluation of proposed cases and other materials to be produced,” “use the materials submitted by the CoEPEs to create” interactive pain treatment scenarios with graphics and embedded videos, “proofread, edit, and program” the scenarios, “advise and suggest ways to improve the cases, when applicable,” and “program, format and code” portions of the NIH website; (4) “facilitate the evaluation of the impact of these training materials” and the “dissemination of the results of these evaluations;” (5) “organize teleconferences,” “summarize these meetings in writing,” and post such summaries on the website; (6) post videos through a special YouTube channel; and (7) obtain additional content for case studies. Id. at 422-23. NIDA’s contracting officer, Kenneth E. Goodling, selected NAICS code 541712, “Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except 6 PALLADIAN PARTNERS, INC. v. US Biotechnology),” for the solicitation. To qualify under this code, a business must have fewer than 500 employees. Palladian alleges that it qualified as a small business under this code and size standard.