Is the NetCents 2 protest saga about to begin again?

When the Air Force put out a list of winners of the NetCents 2 Application Services contract, my first thought was, “There are still NetCents awards being made?”

The various NetCents 2 contracts have been through so many ups and downs and protests and counterprotests that it has been hard to keep up.

In this award, the Air Force is giving contracts to nine large businesses. The Application Services contract is for 10 years with a $960 million ceiling.

The winners are:

• Lockheed Martin
• Jacobs Technology
• SRA International
• L-3 National Security Solutions
• Raytheon
• InfoReliance Corp.
• CACI International
• Northrop Grumman
• General Dynamics
• IBM Corp.

It is important to remember that last July, the Air Force made six awards for this NetCents 2 contract, which kicked off several protests and led the Air Force to pull back the awards and reevaluate.

And that’s how we got to these nine awards, but the Air Force might not be out of the woods yet because two of the original six winners – Tybrin Corp. and Harris IT – didn’t make the cut this time.

So, it’s reasonable to expect them to file protests.

Also, three other protestors – Computer Sciences Corp., Booz Allen Hamilton and HP Enterprise Services – also didn’t make the cut. Filing new protests is still an option for them.

Interestingly, CACI, IBM and Jacobs did not file protests, but benefited from the re-evaluation by winning contracts.

The only protestors who picked up awards were General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.

So, we’ll see if the Air Force has reopened the protest merry-go-round with this set of awards. There are enough disappointed bidders to pick from.

Another interesting NetCents 2 tidbit is that Deltek’s GovWin database is reporting that the Air Force will not recompete the NetCents 2 Enterprise Integration and Services Management contract.

Instead, the Air Force will use the GSA OASIS contract to meet those needs once the NetCents 2 Enterprise Integration and Services Management contract expires next year.

Could we see the Air Force follow a similar track with the rest of the NetCents 2 contracts as they expire? Lord knows there are plenty of other vehicles to pick from, and work has been shifted to other contracts anyway as NetCents 2 has struggled through the various protests.