DoD's $28B technology research services contract open for bids
By
Ross Wilkers
The Defense Department's solicitation for bids on a potential nine-year, $28 billion technology R&D contract hits the street.
The Defense Department’s solicitation for bids on a potential nine-year, $28 billion technology research-and-development services contract went live Tuesday to kick off one of the biggest award opportunities for industry coming down in the next fiscal year.
Interested vendors have two deadlines to pay attention to for the Information Analysis Center Multiple-Award Contract. Past performance reports are due to DoD on Nov. 2 and all other proposal items have a deadline of Nov. 17, according to the request for proposals.
DoD is eyeing an award by September of next year, according to Deltek. The department is seeking both R&D and advisory services and has divided awards into 15 for a full-and-open portion, 10 for small businesses only and four in a third group for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense-related work.
IAC-MAC consolidates work under 40 contracts in three predecessor vehicles: Cyber Security Technical Area Tasks, Defense Systems Technical Area Tasks, and Homeland Defense and Security Technical Area Tasks. CSTAT contracts expire in November 2020, DSTAT in June 2019 and HDSTAT in April 2019.
Incumbents from those three contracts include AECOM, Alion Science and Technology, Battelle, Booz Allen Hamilton, Engility Corp., Harris Corp. (through Exelis), Jacobs Technology, Leidos, ManTech International, Northrop Grumman, Science Applications International Corp. (through Scitor) and Wyle.
Contractors interested in IAC-MAC may compete as the prime for one team and as a subcontractor for another team as DoD is encouraging interested large and small businesses to consider teaming arrangements, partnerships or joint ventures.
The department is using a best-value tradeoff source selection process with both price and performance as factors with a technical evaluation criteria to determine acceptable versus unacceptable.
Task areas for IAC-MAC include cyber, weapon systems, autonomous systems, critical infrastructure protection, biometrics and medical.