Has the Air Force dodged a bullet with NetCents 2 protests?
By
Nick Wakeman
The Air Force now faces nine bid protests over its NetCents 2 Network Operations contract awards, but there are some positive signs that the Air Force might be in a good position after all.
The number of protests over the Air Force’s small business awards for the NetCents 2 Network Operations and Infrastructure contract has grown to nine.
But the good news for the Air Force is that no new protests have been filed since April 14, and out of 17 potential protesters (losing bidders), only nine have filed protests.
Yes, that is more than half, but it’s a manageable number. It indicates to me that this set of NetCents 2 awards isn't a disaster. The 12 winners announced March 27 for the $5.8 billion contract might be a defensible set of awards.
We’ll have to watch to see what the Air Force does now, but nine protests points to a relatively quick resolution.
My choice would be to see the protests run their course with a decision by the Government Accountability Office because I’d like to get some insights into the Air Force decision making processes.
But the smarter course for the Air Force might be to take a corrective action that adds the protesters to the contract. That would get NetCents 2 NetOps up and running the quickest.
We’ll know in a few weeks what direction the Air Force will go in. They have 30 days to file a response to the protests. Usually, they take a corrective action before that deadline if they are going to take a corrective action at all.
For the record, the protesters to date are:
- Pragmatics Inc.
- Furtron Inc.
- CDO Technologies Inc.
- D&S Consultants Inc.
- Tribalco LLC
- VMDn LLC
- EMW Inc.
- Abacus Technology Corp.
- Intelligent Decisions Inc.
Intelligent Decisions filed the first protest, followed by Abacus, D&S Consultants and EMW Inc.
The rest of the protests were all filed April 14.