Army tries again with $5B desktop, mobile product awards
By
Nick Wakeman
The Army makes another attempt at getting its $5 billion Army Desktop and Mobile Computing 3 contract vehicle up and running after a nearly two-year protest saga.
The Army has tried again at awards for its $5 billion Army Desktop and Mobile Computing 3 contract and is hoping that this time it can avoid another quagmire of bid protests.
ADMC 3 was first awarded in February 2017 to nine companies out of 58 bidders. Protests followed and by March of that year, the Army said it would take a corrective action.
That corrective action consisted of reworking the solicitation and asking bidders for revised proposals.
Original winners such as Dell, Iron Bow and Red River went to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to arguethat the corrective action was too much. The court agreed and put an injunction on the Army stopping it from carrying out its corrective action.
But some of the unsuccessful companies appealed that decision. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in September 2018 reversed the Court of Federal Claims decision.
The Army went ahead and made revisions to the solicitation and new proposals were submitted on Feb. 12, 2019.
The winners of this round are:
- Blue Tech Inc.
- JC Technology Inc.
- Strategic Communications
- NCS Technologies
- HPI Federal LLC (HP Inc.)
- Dell Federal Systems
- Iron Bow Technologies
- Sterling Computers
Blue Tech, NCS, Dell, Iron Bow and Strategic Communications were among the original nine winners in 2017. Missing from this new group are Red River, Intelligent Decisions, GovSmart and Ideal Systems Solutions.
We'll watch to see if new protests are filed by those companies or any others given that the number of bids received is 58.
The ADMC contracts have been the Army’s preferred vehicle to buy desktop, laptop and mobile computing devices as well as peripherals.