Marines want their own IT warehouse

The Marine Corps wants to run its own fulfillment center for IT products, but it will need contractor support.

In a request for information, the Marines are looking for staging and warehousing services for commercial hardware products that are purchased for tactical systems, as well as garrison level IT.

Currently, tactical IT assets are managed out of a commercial facility in Charleston, S.C. Garrison IT under the Navy Marine Corps Intranet contract is handled out of a facility in Mechanicsburg, Pa., that is owned and operated by the NMCI team led by prime contractor Hewlett-Packard Co.

That contract is expected to end on April 30, 2014, when the Next Generational Enterprise Network contract replaces NMCI. The prime contractor for NGEN is currently a competition between HP and a team led by Computer Sciences Corp. and Harris Corp.

With the transition to NGEN, the Marine Corps wants the fulfillment center to be government owned, operated and equipped, but with contractor support.

The Marines will manage 10,000 tactical hardware assets and 35,000 garrison hardware assets. There is another 3,000 hardware assets that will be managed for Marine Corps customers, the RFI states.

Some of the services that the Marines are looking to buy from its contractor include program management, logistics, logistics analysis, IT software and hardware installation, quality assurance, warranty disputes, warehousing management and operations and customer support.

The contractor will receive hardware orders that come in from either NGEN or the Marine Corps hardware suit contracts. It will fill the orders either through inventory on hand or through vendor inventory, and deliver the hardware.

Other duties will include integration of software and kitting and shipping hardware. The Marines will expect the contractor to help with planning, development, training, operational consulting, problem resolution and systems maintenance.

Responses to the RFI are due Feb. 11. The notice doesn’t include a timeline for issuing an request for proposals or making an award.

Still to be determined is whether the contract will be a small-business procurement or a full-and-open competition. The notice does state that a small-business designation is one under $25.5 million in annual revenue.