GSA’s OASIS Small Business (OASIS SB) professional services multi-agency contract vehicle is finally moving ahead after settling the final outstanding protests. If you’re not already familiar with OASIS SB and the latest on-ramp, please take a look at our previous write-up in June. The General Services Administration can now proceed with awarding the final small businesses.
Companies ADVENTureOne and Apogee Engineering disagreed with how GSA would rate purchasing and estimating systems, as well as joint-venture systems, certifications and clearances. With joint ventures, the firms contended that companies didn’t need to meet the certification requirements individually. These arguments were denied by the GAO (Government Accountability Office) in its September 20th decision. The specifics are located here.
The protests by ADVENTureOne and Apogee relate to Pools 1, 3 and 4 of OASIS. Pool 1 is for broad services, Pool 3 is a more focused subset of 1 for specific military needs, and Pool 4 features nanotechnology, biotech and life sciences.
These were re-opened (solicitation GS00Q-13-DR-0002, previously GS00Q-13-DR-0002) in order to conduct the open season on-ramp. The purpose was to add roughly 190 more contractors to SB Pool 1, 160 more contractors to SB Pool 3, and 60 more contractors to the SB Pool 4, bringing in more companies and increasing competition for task orders.