The National Institutes of Health Clinical Center dropped a combined synopsis/solicitation on May 20, 2026 for Medical Support Assistant Support Services under RFQ-OALM-26-004272. The requirement is 25 Medical Support Assistants plus 1 Program Manager — 49,920 labor hours per year — supporting patient reception, appointment scheduling, patient travel voucher processing, and admissions across the NIH Clinical Center's 24/7/365 operation in Bethesda. Quotations are due June 4, 2026 at 4:30 PM ET. Questions to the contracting officer are due May 29 at 4:30 PM ET.
On the surface, this is a clean recompete of a long-standing administrative-support requirement — Labor Hour task order under an IDIQ vehicle, NAICS 561110, Full and Open competition, 4-year period of performance (base + three one-year options). There is no estimated contract value disclosed, no past performance evaluation factor, and the technical evaluation is a binary Acceptable / Unacceptable across two factors. The proposal lift is light: a 5-page Technical Volume in Word or PDF and an unlimited-page Business Volume in Excel.
But underneath the clean surface are two structural issues that should hit the May 29 question deadline. One is a contract-type conflict between the solicitation document and the Statement of Work. The other is a resume requirement that is written singular but apparently applies to a plural set of personnel — and the answer to "which positions need resumes" changes the proposal lift, the recruiting timeline, and the pricing model. Both are go/no-go decisions before you commit B&P.
The resume question is the go/no-go call
Section 5 of the solicitation reads: "Offerors shall provide resumes for proposed personnel." The SOW (Section 17) is consistent — "Technical Acceptability Standard 1 requires a resume thoroughly detailing job qualifications associated with the requested labor category." The solicitaiton alternates between "resume" and "resumes". Neither specifies a count.
That ambiguity matters enormously. If the answer is one resume for the Program Manager only — which is how many BD teams will read it on first pass, because the PM is the only position with detailed qualifications language in the SOW — then the proposal effort is genuinely light. You source one resume, write one management approach, and stay inside the 5-page Volume I limit comfortably.
If the answer is resumes for all 25 Medical Support Assistants plus the Program Manager — which is the more literal reading of "resumes for proposed personnel" given that there are 26 proposed personnel — then this becomes a fundamentally different pursuit. You need to source, screen, and document 26 candidates pre-award. You need to fit 26 resumes into a 5-page Volume I (or get clarification that resumes sit outside the page count). And you need to ensure every one of those candidates is available to start by award date or pre-coordinated as a contingent hire.
This is exactly the kind of ambiguity that should hit the question deadline. Suggested phrasing for the offeror's question: "Section 5 instructs offerors to 'provide resumes for proposed personnel.' Please confirm whether resumes are required for (a) the Program Manager only, (b) the Program Manager and all 25 proposed Medical Support Assistants, or (c) a representative sample. Please also confirm whether submitted resumes count against the 5-page Volume I limit." That phrasing forces a binary answer and protects you from a surprise at evaluation.
If you don't submit this question and you guess wrong — either direction — you carry that risk into your bid/no-bid math. Submit it.
The contract-type conflict is the other question to flag
The solicitation's General Information table lists the contract type as IDIQ. The SOW Section 9 is explicit: "The task order is Labor Hour." Both can be technically true — IDIQ describes the ordering vehicle, Labor Hour describes the task order pricing structure — but proposers need to know which one drives the pricing. A Labor Hour proposal is built around fully burdened hourly rates and an assumed hour count (1,920 per FTE per year). An IDIQ-level proposal would typically reserve detailed pricing for the task order level. The pricing template (Attachment 3) is blank, which suggests the agency intends Labor Hour pricing now — but the conflict should still be resolved on the record.
Both this question and the resume-count question can go in the same email to the contracting officer (Shasheshe Goolsby, [email protected]) before 4:30 PM ET on May 29. If the agency answers consistently, you have your structure. If the answers contradict, you have grounds to push for a clarification or amendment.
The 24/7/365 coverage requirement reshapes labor strategy
The NIH Clinical Center operates around the clock, 365 days a year. The SOW requires sufficient staffing to cover every shift, with no individual shift exceeding 12 hours and no work week exceeding 40 hours per staff member. Doing the simple math: covering 26 positions across 24x7 operations is not a 26-FTE staffing problem. It is closer to a 35–40 FTE problem when you account for shift differentials, weekend coverage, holiday coverage, vacation, sick leave, and the SOW's explicit requirement to provide substitute personnel at no additional cost when regular MSAs are absent.
That last clause is the most expensive line in this solicitation. The contractor must absorb the cost of substitute staff for every absence — sick, vacation, training, anything — without billing the Government. Your loaded labor rate needs to carry that cost. A standard 1.0 FTE pricing model that doesn't bake in a substitute pool will under-price the requirement and either lose to a more careful offeror or win with margin you can't sustain. This is the kind of subtle pricing trap that's worth modeling carefully before quote day.
The replacement-resume turnaround is similarly tight. The SOW requires the contractor to deliver three qualified resumes within 5 business days of any Government request for replacement personnel. That requires an active candidate pipeline from day one of performance — not a "we'll figure it out post-award" approach. If you don't have a Bethesda-area recruiting pipeline for MSA-level talent already running, this contract becomes a sourcing crisis in the first 30 days.
Past performance is not evaluated — but it's not nothing either
This is the unusual part. The evaluation criteria are Technical Acceptability (resume + management approach) and Price Reasonableness / Realism. Past performance is explicitly not an evaluation factor. That means a first-time NIH contractor with no Clinical Center experience can compete on equal footing with a long-time incumbent — assuming both can write an acceptable management approach and propose realistic pricing.
But "not evaluated" is not the same as "doesn't matter." The Government can still find a proposal non-responsive on technical acceptability if the management approach reads like the firm has no operational understanding of patient-facing healthcare environments. A management plan that addresses HIPAA-adjacent privacy obligations, infectious-disease compliance documentation, dress-code enforcement, and the emergent-personnel designation (all MSAs must report during federal closures for inclement weather) will read very differently from one that doesn't. If you've never worked in a clinical environment, that gap will show.
Five buried compliance items most BD teams will miss
The SOW is dense with operational requirements that don't show up on the solicitation cover sheet. The ones most likely to bite you post-award:
- Infectious disease compliance program. Every employee working in Building 10 must document measles immunity, hepatitis B vaccination (or signed declination), TB screening (TST or IGRA), varicella history, annual flu vaccination (or signed declination) October–April, and annual Universal Precautions training. The contractor maintains the records and submits an Infectious Disease Compliance Report at award and ongoing. Build this into your onboarding workflow before award.
- Emergent personnel designation. All Patient Support Services Dept MSAs are designated emergent personnel. They report for duty during federal closures for inclement weather. Your candidate outreach needs to set that expectation up front — this is not a job where you stay home when the rest of the government does.
- Strict attendance and grace period rules. A 10-minute grace period applies. Arrival beyond that is tardiness. Habitual use of the grace period — even within the 10 minutes — may constitute non-compliance and trigger a Corrective Action Plan within 25 business days. Your staffing model needs reliable people, not just bodies in seats.
- Personal electronics prohibited on duty. The SOW explicitly prohibits use of personal phones, tablets, and similar devices for non-contract purposes during shifts. Train your candidates on this before they start.
- IPP invoicing required. All payment requests go through the Treasury Invoice Processing Platform (HHSAR 352.232-71). If your firm is not already registered and operational in IPP, register before submitting your quote — not after award.
What our snapshot pulled out that the SAM.gov posting buried
The combined synopsis/solicitation on SAM.gov is 30 pages including the SOW. Most of the items above are in the SOW, not the synopsis. We pulled the full opportunity through RFP Snapshot — the 4-page summary surfaces the document conflicts, the staffing requirements, key personnel language, the proposal volumes, evaluation criteria, and 12 notable requirements on one document, in front of your capture team in three minutes. Upload your own solicitation to see the same output for whatever's next in your pipeline — first three are free.
For more on how this kind of conflict detection works inside RFP Snapshot, see our explainers on PWS vs SOW vs SOO document types, what a Labor Hour contract actually is, and how to pull key personnel requirements out of any solicitation in 30 seconds.
What to do this week
If this is a credible pursuit for your firm, here is the sequence for the next 5 business days:
- Today / tomorrow. Pull the SOW and pricing template. Decide whether this is a pursuit. The 24/7/365 staffing model is the most expensive variable — build your substitute-pool cost into a draft labor rate before you commit B&P.
- By Thursday May 28. Draft and submit your questions to the CO. Lead with the resume-count clarification and the IDIQ-vs-Labor-Hour contract-type clarification. Add anything else your capture team flagged in their first pass.
- By Friday May 29 at 4:30 PM ET. Questions deadline. Anything submitted after closes silently.
- Monday June 1 — Wednesday June 3. Build the 5-page Technical Volume (resume + management approach) and the Excel Business Volume. The management approach is where this proposal is won or lost — address staffing continuity, communications, retention, and substitute-personnel procedures explicitly.
- Wednesday June 3, internal Gold review. Final compliance pass. Confirm 5-page count, fully burdened rates, all 8 CLINs populated (Base + 3 Options × 2 labor categories), and IPP registration confirmed.
- Thursday June 4 by 4:30 PM ET. Submit electronically to Shasheshe Goolsby. Late submissions may not be considered — build in a 2-hour cushion.
If you win, the operational ramp is fast: 26 onsite hires, IPP registration confirmed, infectious disease compliance documentation collected, an active substitute pool, and an Infectious Disease Compliance Report ready to submit at task order award. That ramp is exactly the kind of work our Recruiter Accelerator compresses — auto-generating publish-ready job postings, salary ranges, and Boolean strings for both the PM and MSA positions the moment you decide to bid. And our Proposal Kickoff Accelerator turns the compliance matrix, kickoff deck, and government questions list around in minutes, not days — so your proposal team is operating on the same shared facts from hour one.
Bottom line
RFQ-OALM-26-004272 is a clean 4-year Labor Hour task order on an IDIQ vehicle for a well-understood patient support requirement at the NIH Clinical Center. The proposal lift is genuinely light if the resume requirement applies to the PM only. The proposal lift is meaningfully heavier if it applies to all 26 personnel. Submit the question. Get the answer. Then make your bid/no-bid call on the basis of facts, not guesses.
The 24/7/365 staffing model, the substitute-personnel-at-no-cost clause, the 5-business-day replacement turnaround, and the infectious disease compliance program are all operational realities the SOW makes explicit. Bake them into your labor rate and your retention plan now — not after award.
Want the artifacts — snapshot, compliance matrix, kickoff deck, government clarification questions, and recruiter-ready job reqs for both the PM and MSA positions? Comment "snapshot" on our LinkedIn post and sign up at app.rfpsnapshot.com — we'll load the full set into your workspace free for 7 days. First three uploads on any plan are free, no credit card required.