Procurement & Solicitation

Intake
Intake is a Center for Dietary Assessment established in 2017 with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Intake aims to strengthen policies and programs to improve nutritional status by increasing the availability, quality, comparability, and use of reliable dietary intake data and metrics in LMICs. To help achieve this aim, Intake is interested in catalyzing and supporting the development and validation of novel metrics of diet quality for use in LMICs. Intake is managed by FHI Solutions LLC (FHI 360).

On February 21-22, 2018, Intake – Center for Dietary Assessment convened a meeting in Washington, DC to advance the development of metrics of diet quality for women of reproductive age in low- and middle-income countries.  For further background about the meeting, refer to the Concept Note. The Intake Meeting Agenda Final with corresponding video file names, Participant List and Meeting Questions shared with meeting participants to stimulate thinking and discussion are available by clicking on the links.  Video recordings of the meeting proceedings and separate downloadable PDF presentations are available as well. View the full agenda and access the presentation and video files (saved via dropbox) labeled to correspond with the agenda. The meeting files available at this link will continue to remain posted at least untilIntake’s selection process for the metric development and validation work has closed.

POSTED May 14, 2018:  Intake’s Request for Concept Notes for Diet Quality Metric Validation

Request for Concept Notes – Submissions Due:  June 15, 2018, 5PM EST
In this Request for Concept Notes, we provide background information on the concept of diet quality and existing measures of diet quality (refer to Appendix 1) and outline the broad parameters of the novel metrics for which Intake is interested in supporting the development and validation.  We request interested applicants to submit Concept Notes for the development and validation of novel metrics of diet quality. The Concept Notes should reflect the broad parameters described in the Request for Concept Notes and consider the information provided in the technical report attached to the Request for Concept Notes as Appendix 1.

Applicants interested in preparing a Concept Note in response to this Request should plan on having 24 months available to complete the proposed metric development and validation work, including the completion of a technical report(s) and submission of a manuscript(s) to a peer-reviewed open access journal to report on the findings of the work for each metric developed and validated.  Applicants should note that Intake intends to have active engagement with the successful applicant(s) in the undertaking of the metric development and validation work.  Applicants should be prepared for Intake to collaborate in the undertaking of the work in both a technical and oversight capacity. This will include Intake providing technical input to methodological decisions, and reviewing and commenting on the various outputs from the work.

Award process
Contracts will be awarded to successful applicants during a two-step process that begins with the submission of a Concept Note.  Concept Notes submitted will be reviewed and scored according to the stated evaluation criteria to determine which will proceed to the proposal phase.  Not all Concept Notes and proposal submissions will receive funding.  

In this first stage, the Request for Concept Notes requires submission of a cost proposal in a Summary Budget Template.  In the second stage, the Proposal Stage, bidders that are invited to submit full proposals will be provided with a detailed budget template to complete with their proposal.  For informational purposes, the Draft Detailed Budget Template for the Proposal Stage is accessible by clicking on the link.

The anticipated timeline for the award process is outlined below.

• Concept Notes are due on June 15, 2018, 5PM EST
• Selected applicants will be notified and asked to submit a Proposal on or about June 27, 2018
• Proposals from selected applicants will be due on or about July 25, 2018
• Successful applicants will be notified on or about August 15, 2018

Submission Deadlines and Information
Any questions or requests for clarification need to be submitted to the attention of Jack McLaughlin at JMcLaughlin@fhi360.org and copy to mdeitchler@fhi360.org by May 28, 2018 5:00 PM EST. Inquiries and answers to inquires will be shared with all interested parties via email and on this page.  No telephone inquiries will be answered.

Questions and Answers Postings – due to the rolling nature of question submissions and our preference to answer questions as quickly as possible, we will be posting Q&A (for questions submitted on or before the due date of May 28) to this site as they become available.  Please continue to check back for updated Q&A postings.

Questions and Answers posted May 18, 2018

Questions and Answers posted May 23, 2018

Questions and Answers posted June 1, 2018

Responses to this request for Concept Notes should be submitted by email to Jack McLaughlin (JMcLaughlin@fhi360.org) with a copy to mdeitchler@fhi360.org no later than June 15, 2018 5:00 PM EST. Submissions received after this date and time may not be accepted.  Intake will acknowledge receipt of your submission by email.

For more details, please review the full Request for Concept Notes and Summary Budget Template for the Concept Note Stage by clicking on the links.