GSA preps industry for Alliant 2 Small Business redo
By
Ross Wilkers
Five months after nixing awards, the General Services Administration is previewing its plans for a second try at awards on its Alliant 2 Small Business contract.
The General Services Administration is previewing its second try at making awards on the potential $15 billion Alliant 2 Small Business contract for broad IT services and solutions across the federal government.
GSA outlined a series of its proposed changes to the 15-year contract in a FedBizOpps notice posted Monday, nearly five months after the agency rescinded awards it originally made due to a court ruling in favor of one protestor whose bid was not selected.
This change GSA proposed for a revised Alliant 2 SB solicitation is perhaps the most notable one: an expansion of awards from 80 winners selected in the first attempt to 120 this time around. GSA initially made 81 awards in February 2018 out of 493 total proposals received.
Those awards were nixed in March of this year, when a U.S. Court of Federal Claims judge ruled that GSA would have to reconsider all bids for the contract after Citizant successfully argued the agency gave too much credit to some competitors’ bids and improperly evaluated pricing for some proposals.
A pre-proposal conference date and a due date for revised proposals will be specified in a finalized modification to the solicitation, GSA said.
The potential $50 billion unrestricted track of Alliant 2 has been open for business for a full year and has seen agencies obligate approximately $320 million against it to date, according to Deltek data.
In an emailed note to WT, analysts at contracting intelligence firm The Pulse GovCon said this update from GSA on Alliant 2 SB is intended to get firms prepared and ready to submit their revised bids “because the final RFP (request for proposals) turnaround time will be quick.”
“Basically, if you didn’t submit originally you will not be able to submit this time,” they added.
A second item to pay attention to in the latest notice is that competitors who were considered small businesses at the time proposals were due for the first attempt can submit a revised proposal the second time.
GSA originally intended to make 80 awards for Alliant 2 SB, but added one extra recipient to make that initial roster 81 companies because the solicitation allowed for tied scores at the 80th and final position.
The revised proposal has the same caveat regarding ties. In the event of bidders having precisely-tied scores for the 120th position, all of those competitors will be selected for an award.
If a tied score appears at any position before number 120, the rules will be different based on the example offered in the notice.
“If two offerors reach an identical score at the 39th available position, one tied offeror will take the 39th position and the second tied offeror moves into the 40th position.”