Navy pushes back $5B NGEN bids

The Navy has given an extension to contractors bidding on the $5.4 billion Next Generation Enterprise Network project.

Bids were due July 18, but the Navy has moved the deadline back until Aug. 8 because of several amendments to the solicitation and severe weather in the Washington D.C. area that caused power outages, according to a FedBizOpps.gov posting. 

The Navy is using NGEN to replace the Navy Marine Corps Intranet as the IT support contract for 800,000. The service s spends about $1 billion a year through the NMCI contract, held by Hewlett-Packard Co.

HP Enterprise Services is leading one of two teams chasing NGEN. The second team is led by Harris Corp. and Computer Sciences Corp. So far they are the only announced bidders on the contract.

The extension of the due date for proposals apparently doesn’t impact the current timeline of an award by February 2013.

NMCI has been in place since 2000, when it was won by EDS Corp., which HP later acquired. NGEN, however, will be a five-year contract, with a one-year base and four one year options.

NGEN also is being evaluated as a low price/technically acceptable proposal. The Navy has said they see no services in the contract that they would be willing to pay a premium for.