TSA relents, will let bidders submit new proposals for IMPACT contract
By
Nick Wakeman
The Transportation Security Administration has changed course and will let bidders for its IMPACT infrastructure contract submit revised proposals following a protest by incumbent CSRA.
The Transportation Security Administration apparently took CSRA’s complaints to heart when the company a pre-award protest involving TSA's lucrative IMPACT contract.
CSRA is the incumbent on the current contract to operate TSA’s IT infrastructure. Estimates place its value at between $500 million and $1 billion.
The new contract is known as IMPACT -- IT Management, Performance Analysis and Collaborative Technologies.
CSRA filed a pre-award protest with the Government Accountability Office in mid-July to complain that TSA made substantive changes to the solicitation after proposals were submitted and bidders were not allowed to update their proposals.
The protest had its desired effect and now TSA has said it will reopen discussions and ask for another round of proposals, CSRA CEO Larry Prior told investors in the company's first quarter earnings call Aug. 9.
GAO dismissed CSRA’s protest on July 31 because TSA is taking a corrective action to address the issues raised in that protest.
Prior told analysts CSRA is “looking forward to receiving the details of TSA’s corrective actions to include timing of revised submissions and projected award date.”
He said CSRA has a good relationship with its customer but felt the way the procurement was being managed didn’t match the requirements in the solicitation.
“Any time we sense there is a deviation from their stated process, we do think that's disadvantageous to us as we were religiously following what we think is in line with the (Federal Acquisition Regulations) and important to a good acquisition process,” Prior said.
He said that the company likes its value proposition. “We’ll see how it plays out,” he said.
CSRA is the prime on the current contract known as the IT Infrastructure Program, or ITIPS that it won it 2010. TSA has extended that contract through June 2018. The contract represents close to 3 percent of CSRA's annual sales.
As I described in an earlier posting, this program has long history of bid protests.
Unisys won the original contract in 2002 when TSA was first stood up, but lost the recompete to Computer Sciences Corp. Between 2008 and 2010, there were several rounds of protests before CSC (now CSRA) took over.
I guess CSRA’s successful protest for the third version of the contract is just in keeping with tradition.