SAIC joins fight for $252M SEC infrastructure contract
By
Nick Wakeman
SAIC has become the second company to protest the SEC's award of a $252 million contract to CSRA for infrastructure support.
A second company has entered the fray in a battle for a $252 million contract to support the IT infrastructure at the Securities & Exchange Commission.
CSRA Inc. won the contract, taking it from the incumbent URS Federal Services, so it wasn’t surprising when URS filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office.
Now, Science Applications International Corp. has filed a protest questioning the SEC’s decision to go with CSRA.
The contract is to support the infrastructure for SEC’s headquarters, data centers and 11 regional offices with 6,000 users. It includes operations, infrastructure, architecture and other services.
URS – now part of AECOM – picked up the work when it acquired Apptis. Apptis has held the contract since at least 2009.
A decision by GAO is expected in mid-May.
Of course, the SEC may see something in the two protests that cause it to pull back to the CSRA award and take a corrective action. I think the likelihood of a corrective action increases when you have multiple protests, but it isn’t a guarantee.
Because this one is a single-award contract, we might see it go through the entire process.
Generally, these kinds of protests revolve around objections to price and technical evaluations as well as complaints that the winning bidder received some sort of treatment that prejudiced the losing bidders.
We’ll find out those kinds of details once GAO makes its decision. If it gets that far.
Meanwhile, URS, as the incumbent, continues to support the SEC infrastructure.