NIH/OD/EDI Language Access Services 2017

This National Institutes of Health Master IDIQ for language access services is closed to new orders as of October 30, 2019; all $378 thousand in combined potential value across seven task orders has been obligated and no new awards have been issued since January 2022. The vehicle was established October 25, 2016, to provide translation and interpretation services in Spanish, Chinese, French, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, and over 90 additional languages encountered across NIH institutes and centers.

The scope spans translation and interpretation delivery, with task orders priced under both firm fixed price and time-and-materials structures and award-fee arrangements. Orders completed between September 2017 and September 2024, with durations ranging from under one year to multi-year periods.

Ordering activity was sparse and tailed off. Seven orders were placed between September 2017 and January 2022, averaging roughly one order per year with no new issuances in the final 4.5 years before the October 2019 cutoff passed. Marisa Ensminger captured roughly 53 percent of the combined potential value across three orders ($200 thousand), while Effectiff LLC held the second position at 42 percent ($160 thousand). Craig Enterprises Inc. and AD Astra, Inc. split the remaining 5 percent.

Customer concentration was moderate. NIH Office of Logistics and Acquisition Operations placed 57 percent of orders by value ($214 thousand across four awards), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases placed 42 percent ($160 thousand across two awards), and the Center for Scientific Review placed the remaining 1 percent. About 71 percent of task orders carried no set-aside designation; the remaining 29 percent were small-business awards.

Task-order values ranged from $4.4 thousand to $107.9 thousand, with most awards in the $50 thousand to $75 thousand band. The vehicle is no longer active for new business development.

NIH requires a variety of services in the languages most frequently encountered by respective ICs. Internal survey data conducted by EDI to date shows the following languages to be the most often encountered across NIH: Spanish, Chinese, French, Korean, and Brazilian Portuguese. Other languages identified across several NIH components include Afrikaans, Thai, Japanese, Hindi, Farsi, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Vietnamese, Navajo, Polish, and Tagalog. In addition, there are 90 other languages encountered at the NIH that shall require contracted support on an occasional basis.