Protest holds up pool awards for GSA human capital support vehicle

The General Services Administration is moving forward with some fits and starts with the $5.75 billion on-ramp for its human capital and training vehicle known as HCaTS.

GSA has made awards to 8(a) small businesses for Pools 1 and 2, making some 41 awards across the two pools. But the Pool 2 awards are on hold as a protest by INALAB Consulting is at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

The Government Accountability Office denied INALAB’s protest in October, then the company filed a new protest with the courts in November. All court filings are still under seal, but INALAB did claim at GAO that GSA was wrong to reject its proposal as noncompliant.

With the pool awards, GSA is adding more firms to the group of 46 small businesses that are already primes on the HCaTS. The original contract was awarded in 2016 to 72 businesses, which were chosen through an full-and-open competition.

Since then, GSA has conducted on-ramps to add small businesses to the vehicle.

The vehicle is managed jointly by GSA and the Office of Personnel Management. All agencies can use the contract to acquire training and personnel development as well as work on strategy and organizational improvement.

Click here to see a list of the Pool 1 and Pool 2 winners. It’s important to note that several companies won spots on both pools.