The U.S. Army Public Health Center (APHC), Laboratory Sciences Division, Pesticides Section (PES), Aberdeen Proving Ground, requires a Thermo Chromeleon software to operate their Gas Chromatography for research and purposes. The Thermo Chromeleon brand is vital for remote data client processing software (DPS). 

Contracting activity conducted a market research using the Google search engine. It was determined that the Gas chromatography (GC) is an analytical technique used to separate the chemical components of a sample mixture and then detect them to determine their presence or absence and/or how much is present. These chemical components are usually organic molecules or gases. For GC to be successful in their analysis, these components need to be volatile, GC is a widely used technique across most industries: for quality control in the manufacture of many products from cars to chemicals to pharmaceuticals; for research purposes from the analysis of meteorites to natural products; and for safety from environmental to food to forensics.

If the maintenance, updates, and upgrades of the system are not user friendly, and the system does not have an acceptable method to identify and report files used for the calibration of the instrumentation. The APHC will not be able to perform thorough research.

The product is considered to be a proprietary right of the company, and the contractor provided a sole-source letter dated December 3, 2020 on the 26th April 2021, confirming that they are the sole provider of the Thermo Scientific component required by APHC.