Seven companies to consult Navy on contract research

The Navy has awarded contracts to seven companies for a program to determine whether the Navy should outsource certain jobs to the private sector or continue to perform them internally.

Winning contracts for the Navy's strategic sourcing program were BearingPoint Inc. of McLean, Va.; BAE Systems North America Inc. of Rockville, Md.; E.L. Hamm and Associates Inc. of Virginia Beach, Va.; Grant Thornton of Chicago; Omnitec Solutions Inc. of Bethesda, Md.; Unity Consultants Inc. of Chesapeake, Va.; and Warden Associates Inc. of Springfield, Va.

The companies will support Navy and Marine Corps preliminary planning under the A-76 program, said Laurie Cordell, a contracting officer with the Navy's Strategic Sourcing Acquisition Center of Excellence. A-76 is an Office of Management and Budget document that sets forth how government agencies decide whether to outsource functions.

The process pits government workers against contractors to determine who can best perform a particular government task, such as managing a military depot or providing support to an agency's computer users.

The Navy needs services such as preliminary planning support for competitive sourcing studies, preparing performance-based and traditional statements of work and assisting with market research that identifies potential contractors and compares commercial industry standards against current government standards.

All of the contracts have a ceiling of $60 million over a five-year period, Cordell said. The companies "will be involved with planning how to group the work functions and how to best align a business unit for accomplishing the work that needs to be done under the resulting contract, whether with the government or with the private sector," she added.

However, the companies will not help the Navy put the contract proposals together because that would pose a conflict of interest, according to Cordell.

The contractors also will train Navy and Marine Corps personnel involved in strategic sourcing and provide technical and administrative support for various other Navy strategic sourcing initiatives, such as privatization, divestiture and military conversions.

Savings from the program will allow the Navy to shift resources to military operations rather than support functions, Navy officials said.

BearingPoint has provided strategic sourcing assistance to the Navy in the past, as well as to the Army, FBI and Forest Service, said Paul Gallagher, managing director with BearingPoint's Public Services practice and the company's project leader.

"We have delivered good support to our individual customers both in the Navy and Marine Corps in terms of studies that delivered savings," he said.