Responding faster and more effectively to future public health challenges and emergencies will require the development of a specific, rapid acquisition vehicle. To achieve this, BARDA is launching the Rapid Response Partnership Vehicle (RRPV), the next generation of acquisition partnering to support U.S. health security.
In alignment with objectives outlined in the 2022-2026 Strategic Plan, BARDA seeks to leverage its Other Transaction Authority (OTA) to develop the RRPV. The RRPV will complement BARDA’s existing acquisition vehicles such as the Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) and the Easy Broad Agency Announcement (EZ-BAA) and will expand the mechanisms through which BARDA can rapidly partner with product developers prior to and during an emergency response. With the RRPV in place, BARDA will be able to leverage OTA agreements to meet the dynamic needs of the BARDA mission through a streamlined, expedited process.
Lessons learned from the COVID-19 response highlighted the need to rapidly establish or expand partnerships when a public health emergency occurs using pre-existing agreements. The RRPV is envisioned as a 10-year, multiple-purpose acquisition vehicle to facilitate end-to-end development of future medical countermeasures, from the early stage through the advanced development, procurement, sustainment, and commercialization, including manufacturing infrastructure development. The RRPV is designed to foster and accelerate the speed of acquisition and partnerships in response to pandemics and other biothreat incidents and promotes innovation and rigorous development of medical countermeasures and enabling technologies to further enhance national health security.
BARDA seeks to establish a base OTA partnership with a Consortium Management Firm (CMF) that will facilitate the establishment and administration of the RRPV consortium. The CMF should be capable of assembling, overseeing, and coordinating a consortium of innovators and developers to accelerate medical countermeasure product and technology development, regulatory approval, procurement, commercialization, and sustainment to address the varying needs of BARDA which include but are not limited to pandemic influenza, emerging infectious diseases, and other biological threats. Following establishment of the consortium from the base agreement, the CMF will solicit proposals from consortium members for individual project requirements on behalf of the BARDA team. BARDA will then evaluate Request for Project Proposal (RPP) responses and authorize the CMF to issue project agreements with Consortium members for individual projects.
This consortium will provide appropriate dedicated effort to technologies that advance all aspects of the BARDA mission. There will be two distinct focus areas of the RRPV:
• Medical Technology (MedTech) including diagnostics
• Vaccines and Therapeutics (Vx/Tx)
There will be internal CMF staff assigned to execute the dynamic needs of these two technical focus areas. The two-focus-area approach is designed to enable targeted product development expertise. It will also ensure that, during a response event, sufficient dedicated resources are available to meet bold timelines and avoid one technical focus area diverting resources from the other.
Are you a Consortium Management Firm interested in facilitating the establishment and administration of BARDA’s new RRPV? Review the Call for Submissions: BARDA Rapid Response Partnership Vehicle available on SAM.gov (23-BARDA-SOL-RRPV: https://sam.gov/opp/8d77b20ce92f4f91a31b36305999bba8/view) and submit your responses by 2 P.M. ET on August 7, 2023.