Specifications include, but are not limited to: The Department is dedicated to promoting health, safety, resiliency, and opportunity to all Maine Residents. The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Maine CDC) provides leadership, expertise, information, and tools to assure all Maine residents have the access and opportunity to live healthy lives. The Department’s Health and Environmental Testing Laboratory (HETL) goals are to isolate, identify, analyze, and monitor any biological, chemical, or radiological hazards which are capable of causing harm. HETL assists other agencies in the prevention, treatment, and control of such hazards which threaten the community or environment through an effective fee schedule established with the flexibility of making services available regardless of the public’s ability to pay. In addition, HETL provides consultation with other agencies on State policy development, including quality assurance oversight of services provided by the public and private sectors. Pursuant to the Maine Comprehensive and Limited Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Rule, 10-144 C.M.R. Ch. 263 (Department of Health and Human Services) jointly with 06-096 C.M.R. Ch. 26 (Department of Environmental Protection), Section 9, A.3.r., HETL is required to subcontract for testing in order to remain in compliance with the accreditation requirements. The services resulting from this RFP will ensure HETL remains in compliance with the accreditation rule Section 9, A.3.r., as well as ensure its ability to timely process all requests for samples by meeting the seven (7) to ten (10) day turnaround time requirements established. The Department requested seven hundred one (701) samples in 2022 and one thousand nine hundred twenty-three in 2023, respectively, to be process via a third party accredited laboratory. The methods outsourced in each calendar year is included in Exhibit 1.
