Army ITES-3S delays net $400M extension for small businesses
By
Nick Wakeman
A group of nine small businesses have won extensions worth $400 million to provide IT services to the Army, apparently thanks in part to delays of the huge Army ITES-3S contract.
A group of nine companies were awarded extensions worth $400 million under an Army contract for IT services, apparently thanks in part to delays of the huge Army ITES-3S contract.
The Army IT Services-Small Business contract was first awarded in 2011 to 14 companies. It had a $400 million ceiling over five years.
This time around, nine of the 14 won extensions also with a ceiling of $400 million. The extension pushes the contract out to April 13, 2018.
The winners of ITS-SB are:
- Exeter Information Technology Services, Gaithersburg, Md.
- Future Research Corp., Huntsville, Ala.
- Link Solutions Inc., McLean, Va.
- M-Cubed Information Systems Inc., Silver Spring, Md.
- MicroTech LLC, Vienna, Va.
- SNVC LLC, Fairfax, Va.
- Superlative Technologies Inc., Ashburn, Va.
- T4 LLC, Alexandria, Va.
- Tantus-OnPoint ATO Systems Support LLC, Arlington, Va.
The contract is managed by the Army’s Computer Hardware Enterprise Software and Solutions organization known as CHESS. The contract is used to buy services such as electronic product environment assessment including site surveys, planning for energy use mitigation and reduction, and recycling.
Other service areas include information assurance, independent verification and validation, IPv6 engineering, and IT integration.
Five companies that were on the contract originally did not win extensions because they were not able to recertify that they are still small businesses, a source told me.
The extension also apparently was driven by the challenges the Army has had making awards for the ITES-3S contract, which is in source selection but has been hit with several bid protests. Deltek estimates an award by the end of June.
Of course, once the awards are made more protests and delays are possible.
So with this extension, the Army at least has a vehicle in place to continue buying services that it needs.
To date, MicroTech has been the most active on ITS-SBwith $89.7 million in task orders, followed by Exeter with $70.1 million and Future Research with $65.7 million, according to Deltek.