Dell, iGov lodge ITES-3H protests

Dell Federal Systems and iGov have each lodged pre-award protests of the $5 billion Army ITES-3H contract.

ITES-3H is the Army’s contract for acquiring a wide variety of computer and IT hardware. Awards are expected in the spring of 2015.

Since this blog was first published earlier today, I've learned that a third company, Technology Integration Group, also has filed a protest.

And more interesting is that all three are protesting because they have been excluded from the final competition for the contract.

This is a particular blow to Dell, which is an incumbent on ITES-2H. According to Deltek, Dell has won about $693 million in task orders since 2007.

ITES-3H has been delayed several times already, and the Army has already extended ITES-2H twice, which now runs through July 2015.

The Army is running a two-step competition for the third iteration of the contract.

Because of other protests, it has twice evaluated submissions from 50 companies and winnowed that down to a smaller number from which four large-business and four small-business winners would be picked.

The current contract has six primes: IBM, Dell, Iron Bow, CDW-G, Unicom Systems and World Wide Technology.

I’m awaiting word back from Dell, and I’ll update this as soon as I can.

With the awards not expected until next year, these protests likely will be resolved before winners are announced.