GSA readies draft RFP for $12B OASIS contract

When it comes to the final details of the General Services Administration’s new professional services contract, One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services, or OASIS, “everything is in play,” said Jim Ghiloni, GSA’s OASIS program manager.

Although he provided few concrete details about OASIS, he did unveil its timetable for the first time.

The draft Request For Proposals would be ready this summer with the final RFP coming in the winter. The awards announcement is scheduled for summer 2013 at which time he said he expects some protests.

GSA will issue notices to proceed will begin in the fall of 2013, he said.

Ghiloni told participants at the Coalition for Government Procurement’s spring conference April 26 that his office is continuing to engage customers and industry so the process of finalizing the contract vehicle “remains as transparent as possible.”

“We’re going to use off-ramps and on-ramps, which is fairly standard these days. We’ll also employ a lot of the Web 2.0 and beyond technologies as far as offering data and information to customers and to industry partners on our website, chat rooms, discussion forums,” Ghiloni said.

There are no plans to issue a formal request for information, he said. Rather he will use social media and perhaps a webinar or two to foster industry comments and feedback.

Ghiloni underscored that OASIS is a professional services contract, not an IT contract.

“What we’ve seen [during the past several years] is a real increase in the amount of professional services being acquired across the entire federal landscape,” he said, adding that “there’s been no equivalent to [governmentwide acquisition contracts] for professional services.”

So OASIS will operate like GWACs, especially Alliant, which Ghiloni spear-headed at GSA before transitioning to the OASIS vehicle.

However, he said, there’s been no decision yet whether OASIS will be one contract with small-business set-asides or two Alliant-like separate contracts, he added.

The broad framework of the new contract will include management services, logistics, professional engineering services, financial advice and others.

In announcing the OASIS contract vehicle last year, GSA officials said it would be more like a GWAC or multiple-award contract than a Multiple Award Schedule.

They said it would be a hybrid contract with commercial and non-commercial items available and would also allow for all types of contracts at the task-order level.

Ghiloni estimated the total value of OASIS at about $12 billion during an estimated 10-year lifespan.

Ghiloni could not say precisely how many contractors would be named to the award, but said the number “probably would be smaller rather than larger. Certainly not in the hundreds."