More protests hold up GSA's $5.5B 2GIT contract
By
Nick Wakeman
Following in the family tradition, GSA's replacement for the Air Force's NetCents IT product vehicle faces a second round of bid protests.
The General Services Administration and the Air Force continue to face troubles in getting the $5.5 billion 2nd Generation IT blanket purchase agreement off the ground.
Known as 2GIT, the contract is following in the footsteps of its predecessor NetCents 2 IT Products vehicle, which also was hit with multiple rounds of protests before it was finally up and running.
2GIT is facing now facing a second set of protests after GSA made new awards earlier this month.
GSA and the Air Force originally made awards in the fall to 75 companies with 56 of them being small businesses. Three companies filed protests -- Red River Technology, Coast to Coast Computer Products and Blue Tech.
As often happens, GSA pulled the awards back to make a corrective action and the protests were dismissed. But then two things happened, according to sources.
GSA on April 30 amended the solicitation to change its intended approach to evaluations but did not ask for revised offers. GSA made new awards on the next day, May 1.
Red River then filed a new protest on Friday, May 8 and objected to the changes in the solicitation. They also filed a protest challenging the award decisions, arguing that if the evaluation had been proper, Red River would have been picked.
Force 3 and Blue Tech followed suit with protests of their own on Monday, May 11. Force 3 is arguing that if the evaluation was conducted properly, it would have been picked. Blue Tech is objecting to the change in the solicitation as well as the evaluation.
Decision are due in mid-August.
Interestingly, Force 3 won a spot when the BPA was first award in the fall.
Because these protests have just come in during the past few days, we’ll keep an eye out for more protests and especially if other winners from the fall didn’t make it this time, like Force 3.
When GSA made the awards in November, agency officials talked about how they had worked together for two years to develop the contract and that it was designated Best-in-Class because of its ability to track and collect data, reduce costs and incorporate supply chain risk management.