When one serves on NIH grant review panels, or study sections, one must now register with the US government as a government contractor in order to get reimbursement for hotel and meals, plus the staggering $200 honorarium for each day of the meeting (for which you have spent between two and four weeks of reading, writing, and prep time.)
As a result, you get on e-mail lists for all sorts of federal solicitations for bids on all kinds of projects, or "federal business opportunities." I chose not to opt out of these e-mails because, well, you just can't have enough e-mail, right?.
In all seriousness, I do have several colleagues from throughout my career that operate various small businesses, primarily in consulting services related to the biomedical sciences. Hence, the following solicitation is for them as well as to provide an example for any trainees who might be thinking about non-academic career paths in consultancy:
Solicitation Number: MG695086
Title: Toxicological Consultant/Expert Services
Due date for Responses: September 17, 2008, by 4:00 pmType of Competition: Small business set-aside under NAICS Code 541990 with a small business size standard of average annual receipts over the past three fiscal years of no more than $7.0 million.
Contracting POC: Melissa M. Gentry, Supervisory Contract Specialist, gentry1@niehs.nih.gov, Phone: 919-316-4625, Fax: 919-541-5117
Brief Description:
The National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) needs toxicological consultant/expert services for the National Toxicology Program.
The preparation of the 12th Report on Carcinogens (RoC) requires specialized toxicological assistance in order to publish the 12th RoC in a timely manner. The Report on Carcinogens (RoC) is a congressionally mandated biennial report that is prepared by the National Toxicology Program (NTP) on behalf of the Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The latest edition of the RoC, the 11th RoC, was published in 2005. In 2004 the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published peer-reviewed guidelines that required that the RoC review process be revised, and after considerable deliberations with both the OMB and HHS, the NTP announced its revised review process in April 2007. The NTP was not able to initiate the review of new nominations for the 12th RoC until 2007, which has delayed the publication of the 12th RoC.
In order to publish the RoC in time, the staff requires assistance from a consultant with experience in preparing the types of products needed to publish the RoC and familiarity with the RoC review process.
Task 1: Review of the Draft Background Documents.
Task 2: Review of the Substance Profiles for Current Listings.
Task 3: Preparation of the RoC.
The synopsis with complete details and a link to the Request for Quotation may be viewed by going to https://www.fbo.gov/ and inserting the solicitation number (MG695086) in the Quick Search box or by clicking on this link:
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=2c81704df892f4e0ccd2899d4cb076a7&tab=core
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This was a nice gesture, but someone who's just following up on the solicitation now would be better off putting their efforts elsewhere - such as positioning for the opportunities that won't be announced for a year or more.
It wouldn't be a bad thing to have more competition for this kind of work. There are a lot of the same faces pursuing these opportunities, and most of them are working for both Federal and industrial clients. This increases the difficulty of finding contractors without COI issues to work on technical documents that support regulatory decisions. See, for example, the case of Sciences International who was working for NTP on toxicological profiles:
http://impact_analysis.blogspot.com/2007/12/tangled-story-of-bisphenol-…