The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has been using the eFAST BPA (blank purchasing agreement) for ten years now. Standing for the FAA Accelerated and Simplified Tasks, the contract vehicle allows federal workers to procure various contract types electronically including Firm-Fixed Price, Cost Reimbursable, Time and Materials, Labor Hour, and others. To this date, the program has awarded over $1.5 billion to small businesses. The 7th open season for eFast is now here, and the FAA is looking for new vendors...

The General Services Administration (GSA) is currently hard at work provisioning the third iteration of its popular 8(a) Streamlined Technology Application Resources for Services (STARS III). The draft solicitation was released on August 9, 2019 and it was originally anticipated that the final solicitation would be released sometime in December 2019. Unfortunately, it was been pushed back to September of 2020, however recent reports suggest the 3rd week of July. The good news to the 787 8(a) contractors currently on...

The DHS Office of Procurement Operations (OPO) is planning to release the FirstSource III requirements draft by the end of June. As of May 19th, a short document which contains the scope of the draft was made available on beta.sam.gov. FirstSource III is a large-scale Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract for commercial IT commodity products and services. The previous DSH-wide FirstSource II contract was awarded back in 2012 had a $3 Billion ceiling. It will be coming to a...

The Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) located in Patuxent River, MD, had announced back on March 13th, 2020 its intention to procure supplies and incidental services competitively to support Program Manager Strike Planning and Execution Systems (PMA-281) software/hardware development and sustainment efforts. That came to fruition recently with twelve awardees announced (see below for details). The contract ceiling is $498 million with an expected 5-year duration. PMA-281 provides warfighter strike planning and execution capabilities via operationally relevant, programmatically-sound material solutions....

Six companies earned a seat on the Veterans Affairs’ novel VHA Integrated Healthcare Transformation contract. This contract has a ceiling value of $1 billion and a length of up to ten years (5 years base and 5 option years). As this is a brand-new IDIQ with the VHA, there are no associated incumbents. There was a total of ten companies that bid on the contract. Those who made the grade will compete for task orders to work with the Veterans...

CIO-SP4, standing for Chief Information Officer – Solutions and Partners IV, is an upcoming IT products and services contract vehicle with an estimated value of $20 billion. NITAAC (NIH Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center) has released their draft of the solicitation right on time. Given the size, we anticipate there will be much buzz as contractors review the evaluation criteria and start to determine both their bid and potential teaming arrangements. CIO-SP4 has a 15-year period of performance. Technically it’s...

CIO-SP3 Small Business (SB) is one of the vehicles in the $20 billion CIO-SP3 program. This was created to provide custom information technology (IT) integration and outsourcing support for five different socio-economic set-asides. This vehicle has been relatively successful since its original awarding in 2012, with a number of small businesses outgrowing their SB status while providing CIO-SP3 services. Agencies leverage this contract vehicle to purchase IT services in areas such as systems integration and software development, imaging, healthcare technology,...

Continuing the trend of Program/IDIQ consolidation in the federal space, The GSA released the ASTRO IDIQ. ASTRO is MAC vehicle created to meet the requirements of warfighters, scoped in collaboration with U.S. Combatant Commands.  It is intended to supplement DoD capabilities to ensure interoperability, flexibility and assurance on the modern-day battlefield. Sponsored by the Department of Defense (DoD), The program will be managed by GSA’s Federal Systems Integration and Management Center (FEDSIM). ASTRO is a FEDSIM-only program (not Government-wide), and...

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) has been looking for a vendor to continue supporting the Healthcare.gov website. The site provides a health information exchange (HIE) portal that requires significant vendor support/maintenance. The latest 5-year contract clocks in at $398 million. Accenture is the incumbent who began support services for the portal in 2014 with a $45 million contract due to difficulties experienced by CGI Federal during the launch phase. The company then received a $536 million contract...

Recently the General Services Administration (GSA) has been dispatching Mass Modification notifications to schedule-holders. These notices describe the second phase of modifications that consolidate 24 Multiple Award Schedules (MAS) into one single schedule for products, services, and solutions. The consolidated MAS solicitation, which was issued last October, has a streamlined format and new categories and Special Item Numbers (SINs). Everything seems to be on schedule with the mass mods going out on January 30th, associating contract terms with the single...