Big names join protests of Army's $5B ADMC contract

The number of bid protests involving the $5 billion Army Desktop and Mobile Computing 3 contract has swelled to 17, including protest from two of the biggest incumbents, HP Inc. and CDW-G.

CDW and HP were the second and third largest primes, respectively, on ADMC 2 but each failed to make the cut for the third iteration.

The top prime, Dell, won a spot on ADMC 3 as did NCS Technologies. They are the only primes out of eight that were picked for ADMC 3. Dell also is the only large business on ADMC 3.

The Army has declined to comment on the protests or award decisions.

The ADMC vehicles are used by the Army to buy desktops, laptops, mobile devices and other peripherals and related services.

Protesters to date are:

• ACE Computers
• All Gov Tech LLC
• AlphaSix Corp.
• APRISA Technology LLC
• BahFed Corp.
• CDW-G (incumbent on ADMC 2)
• CounterTrade Products
• GovConnection
• HP Inc. (listed on the GAO docket as HPI Federal LLC and an incumbent of AMDC 2)
• Insight Public Sector
• Integration Technologies Group (incumbent on ADMC 2)
• Mercom Corp.
• MicroTech
• New Tech Solutions
• PCM-G Inc.
• Sterling Computers Corp.
• Transource Services Corp. (incumbent on ADMC 2)

Primeson ADMC 2 that haven’t filed protests are Telos Corp., Westwood Computer and MPC-G. MPC-G may no longer exist. It filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Westwood now goes by the name Emtec, which acquired it in 2007.

The Army received 56 bids for ADMC 3 but only made nine awards, so we might not be finished with the protests.

The large number of bids and the relatively small number of awards got me thinking so I dug into the solicitation. I’m not expert but here are some things to note.

This was a lowest price/technically acceptable contract. No surprise there but it does make me wonder if there was a threshold the Army had in mind or if a natural break occurred in the pricing that sent the nine winners apart from the rest.

According to the solicitation, posted by Deltek, the Army wanted to make five small business awards. It said it would picked five small business with the lowest priced, technically acceptable proposals.

Other small businesses that were deemed technically acceptable then went into the full-and-open competition. From this pool of small and large business, the Army said it would pick three with the lowest price.

That brings the total to eight. But the Army also said it could pick more if it was in the government’s best interest.

My guess is that the price difference between the No. 8 pick and the No. 9 pick was negligible.

Another interesting factor is that the Army says it will conduct an on-ramping competition in year five of the contract before the five-year option is awarded. This will allow it to add new companies if it wants. But the Army also reserves the right to have an on-ramp every year if it sees the need.

Give that this is an LPTA contract, the protests likely focus on the price evaluation piece, so we’ll see how that goes.

Again, more protests might be on the way, so we’ll be checking the docket.

And as a reminder here are the nine companies that won. They are stuck in limbo until the protests are resolved.

The winners are:

• Blue Tech Inc. San Diego, (W52P1J-17-D-0009);
• Iron Bow Technologies LLC, Chantilly, Va. (W52P1J-17-D-0010);
• Red River Computers Co. Inc., Claremont, N.H. (W52P1J-17-D-0011)
• Intelligent Decisions Inc., Ashburn, Va. (W52P1J-17-D-0012)
• NCS Technologies Inc., Gainesville, Va.  (W52P1J-17-D-0013)
• Dell Federal Systems LP, Round Rock, Texas (W52P1J-17-D-0014)
• Strategic Communications LLC, Louisville, Ky. (W52P1J-17-D-0015)
• GovSmart Inc., Charlottesville, Va. (W52P1J-17-D-0016)
• Ideal Systems Solutions Inc., Minnetonka, Minn. (W52P1J-17-D-0017)