12 win spots on GSA's COMET contract

NOTE: This article appeared first on FCW.com

The General Services Administration tapped 12 vendors for its IT modernization contract and issued about $240 million in task orders

The agency notified winning bidders for the CIO Modernization and Enterprise Transformation (COMET) blanket purchase agreement in a letter sent on Sept. 25.

COMET is the re-compete of GSA's CIO Application Maintenance, Enhancements, and Operations (CAMEO) contract that supports the Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), which encompasses GSA Global Supply, multiple-award schedules, personal property management, travel, fleet, purchase card and integrated technology programs.

According to a copy of the letter obtained by FCW, vendors include Booz Allen Hamilton, CGI Federal, Collabralink Technologies, Digital Management LLC, Incentive Technology Group/Accenture Federal Services, Karsun Solutions, Octo Consulting Group, REI Systems, Sevatec, Techflow, Unisys Corp. and Vencore.

GSA declined comment on the contract until after the 10-day period to contest the awards concludes.

"As GSA modernizes their IT infrastructures, our team's impressive track record of success in helping transition the federal government to agile, SecDevOps and cloud-based system design makes DMI an ideal next-gen partner," Senior Vice President of DMI's Federal Civilian Business Jay Lodge said in a Sept. 27 statement on the contract.

The agency had been thinking about splitting COMET into two parts -- IT services, including operations and maintenance, cloud, support of GSA's Integrated Awards Environment acquisition portal, as well as architecture, engineering and advisory support.  That approach, according to DMI spokeswoman Donna Savarese, was streamlined as GSA went through a "rigorous process" of finding a combination of small and large businesses to handle the BPA.

The newly named vendors, according to GSA, were winnowed down from a field of 39 after the request for quotes was issued this past summer.

According to vendor sources, the COMET BPA also contained the GSA's Contract Acquisition Life-Cycle Management (CALM) system, the agency's contract writing system.

The GSA letter also said there had been a number of task orders already awarded under the contract.  Those include a $115 million task order to Sevetec for IT operations and maintenance. Booz Allen Hamilton won two task orders -- one for $76 million for IT operations and maintenance and another for $32 million for operations and maintenance for FAS cloud services. Incentive Technology Group/Accenture Federal Services and Vencore each received an approximately $16 million task order to support development of GSA's Integrated Awards Environment beta.SAM.gov.