Contract · Federal

B--Intent to Award Notice: University of Minnesota

Agency: INTERIOR, DEPARTMENT OF THE / US GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Location: RESTON, VA
Amount: Amount not listed
Posted: Sep 10, 2026
Set-aside: None (open competition)
NAICS code: 541380 - Architectural, Engineering, and Related Services (general category) look up NAICS codes
PSC code: B529

Timeline

Posted

Sep 10, 2026
Status

Closing soon

What contracts like this typically pay

No award history yet for this category (NAICS 541380).

What this contract is for

Agency: INTERIOR, DEPARTMENT OF THE / US GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
Location: RESTON, VA
NAICS: 541380 - Architectural, Engineering, and Related Services (general category)
Scope: Federal

The U.S.

Geological Survey (USGS), Florence Bascom Geoscience Center, intends to award a non-competitive purchase order to Regents of the University of Minnesota, University of Minnesota (U of M), located in Duluth, MN, for a suite of geochemical analyses on water and sediment samples in direct support of the research project, Drought and Flood Extremes of the Continental United States: Past to Present., to be delivered to Reston, VA for the period of 9/21/2026 to 9/20/2027 with four (4) Option Years as follows: Option Year One (1): 09/21/2027 - 09/20/2028 Option Year Two (2): 09/21/2028 - 09/20/2029 Option Year Three (3): 09/21/2029 - 09/20/2030 Option Year Four (4): 09/21/2030 - 09/20/2031 The study conducted in this research project necessitates freeze coring to preserve the structure of mm-scale, water saturated seasonally-deposited layers.

The only way to ensure preservation of these layers is by flash freezing the sediments at the bottom of the lake and keeping the "freeze core" completely frozen during transport and analyses.

The U of M offers the only nearby facility where the frozen cores can be stored and analyzed over the duration of the five-year research project, which allows for short transport in a cooler on dry ice from each of the six to twelve study sites, where each core is collected.

Transport between the study sites or frozen storage must be within a 200-mile radius and a few hours' drive in order to keep the samples firmly frozen during transport.

The U of M is the only facility within the required radius offering stable isotope, elemental abundance, mineralogy, or major ion measurements of environmental samples.

Analyzing a frozen core at the micron scale on an x-ray fluorescence scanner takes 6-8 hours, which would ordinarily result in melting.

UMD has...

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