Protest troubles continue for NetCents

Four large businesses have filed protests over the Air Force’s decision to leave them off of the NetCents II Application Services contract worth $960 million.

The Air Force awarded contracts to 10 companies earlier this month. It was the second time the Air Force tried to award this portion of the troubled NetCents II contract. When they awarded the contract a year ago, they were hit with protests, which led the Air Force to pull back and re-evaluate.

I knew when I saw the awards July 15 that the protests troubles were going to return because the Air Force left off one of the original winners, Harris IT. [I mistakenly wrote that they left off Tybrin Corp., but Tybrin was acquired by Jacobs Technology, so they did keep their spot.]

The Air Force also left off three other large and well-known protestors, Computer Sciences Corp., Booz Allen Hamilton and HP Enterprise Services.

So now, Harris, CSC, Booz and HP have all filed protests that the Government Accountability Office and the Air Force will have to resolve.

In the meantime, the contract is stuck on hold, and I can’t help but think that the window for the contract is closing quickly. Work that would have gone to NetCents II Application Services is surely moving to other contracts, because the work still needs to get done.

Unless, that is, the Air Force caves and makes awards to all of the protesters, which would be the quickest resolution.

As a reminder, the winners of this contract are:

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