12-2-21 The federal Department of State (DoS) released a draft version of the EVOLVE IT Services Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) solicitation on October 24th. This multi-award contract (MAC) is replacing 23 Bureau of IRM (Information Resource Management) contracts including 2010’s Vanguard 2.2.1. EVOLVE will have a five-year base term and may include option periods that could extend task orders by up to 5 additional years. The award ceiling, while initially stated at $4 billion, could be as high as $8 billion...

Army’s $10B ITES-4H IT Contract is Released 8/27/21 Published on August 25, the Army has released it’s highly anticipated ITES-4H contract. The IT Enterprise Solutions hardware vehicle has a ceiling value of up to $10 billion for procuring enterprise IT goods. The length of the contract is the typical 5 years and 5 option years. Manufactured product categories the Army is seeking are broken down into seven catalogs. They consist of purchasing and/or leasing desktop and laptop computers, thin clients,...

GSA OASIS SB on-ramp – 18 firms allowed to stay and others are now back in the running 7/30/21 While reviewing a protest from the company Wavelink, the court found that 18 firms that were awarded for the OASIS SB (small business) on-ramp were improperly given awards. The objection resulted from proposed direct labor rates lower than the suggested range however the awardees did not provide a rationale for them. The GSA went ahead and eliminated the solicitation provisions recognized...

7/29/21 Continuing the trend of Program/IDIQ consolidation in the federal space, The GSA released the final solicitation of the ASTRO IDIQ roughly a year ago. ASTRO is a MAC vehicle created to meet the requirements of warfighters, scoped in collaboration with U.S. Combatant Commands.  Its purpose is to supplement DoD capabilities to ensure interoperability, flexibility, and assurance on modern-day battlefields. The awards covered ten different fields (or pools), including: data operations, mission operations, aviation, ground, space, maritime, development and systems...

Good news come to those who submitted a proposal to obtain a second chance at the Navy’s potential 10-year, $50 billion SeaPort Next Generation (SeaPort-NxG) professional services contract vehicle. In the Defense Department’s July 14 award digest, it was announced that new awards went to 600 businesses overall, though the companies’ identities were not provided. There were only 20 companies that missed the cut – now those are some favorable odds! The first round of awards took place in December...

There has been yet another amendment to the highly anticipated $50 billion CIO-SP4 contract. On July 9, The National Institutes of Health Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center (NITAAC) released its sixth amendment to the solicitation. The amendment was released on the tailings of backlash and protests received over the past few weeks. NITAAC is now allowing bidders to list three examples of past performance, or 30 examples total across the 10 task areas, on the self-scoring worksheet. There was...

06-29-2021: The U.S. Navy has chosen nine companies for a potential eight-year, $249.7 million contract to help the Navy design and produce unmanned hardware and software platforms. The Department of Defense has explained these awardees will compete for task orders to provide technical support services for unmanned waterborne and underwater mine countermeasures systems. The aforementioned technical support includes the following services: specification and design, fabrication, installation, test and evaluation, fielding, maintenance, training, and configuration and program management of hardware and...

6-23-21 The General Services Administration (GSA) has selected the initial 426 awardees for the fourth-generation 8(a) Streamlined Technology Acquisition Resource for Services, aka STARS III GWAC. The STARS III solicitation’s purpose is acquiring IT services and solutions from 8(a) small businesses. This includes emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and robotic process automation. It entered the Sources Sought stage almost a year ago on August 9, 2020. Thereafter, the contract has expanded beyond the initial draft to a $50-billion...

5/20/21 You might be wondering where the NIH Information Technology and Acquisition Assessment Center’s (NITAAC) CIO-SP4 IT services vehicle’s final solicitation is. You are not alone. With a ceiling of $40 billion, many firms are eyeing this GWAC closely. Like with most things delayed or cancelled, COVID is mostly to blame as it slowed down NIH’s approval of the contract’s business case. Like dominos, this caused a delay in getting approval from the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Procurement Center Representative...