Navy releases $10B NGEN RFP

The Navy has finally released the request for proposals for its much anticipated Next Generation Enterprise Network.

The final RFP came out late Wednesday night. Proposals are due July 18 and the Navy says it expects awards by Feb. 12, 2013. The Navy has put a price tag of $4.5 billion on the contract over five years, but Deltek has pegged the value at $10 billion over 10 years.

Two teams are known to be bidding on the contract. One is led by the incumbent Hewlett-Packard Co. and the other by Harris Corp. and Computer Sciences Corp.

NGEN is a follow-on to the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, which EDS won in 2000 and HP subsequently took over when it acquired EDS.

Harris was a subcontractor to EDS through its acquisition of Multimax.

The new contract is divided into two parts: enterprise services and transport services.

The Navy says a bidder can submit a combined proposal or separate proposals for the two parts. The Navy plans to make two separate awards, but reserves the right to make a combined award, according to the RFP.

In the case of the Harris-CSC team, CSC is the prime on the enterprise services portion and Harris is the prime on the transport services contract.

NGEN will have 800,000 users at 2,500 locations.

NMCI technically expired in September 2010, but HP has continued to operate the network under a continuity of services contract, which expires in April 2014.

“The release of the RFP is a significant milestone and it reflects critical insight from industry as we compete for the world's largest enterprise network,” said Capt. Shawn Hendricks, the Navy’s program manager. “The comments from our ongoing dialogue with industry were carefully reviewed and reflected in the government's position in the NGEN RFP.”