Commerce starts the bidding for $1.5B small business IT contract

The Commerce Department is now ready to take bids from small businesses in pursuit of a potential 10-year, $1.5 billion enterprise IT services contract vehicle.

Proposals are due to Commerce by Jan. 17 and the department expects to make between 15 and 20 awards for its Commerce Acquisition for Transformational Technology Services contract, as outlined in this Friday solicitation release on SAM.gov.

Commerce’s intent is for roughly half of the awards under CATTS to go to small businesses with socio-economic designations.

That breaks out as follows:

• Between two and four awards for service-disabled, veteran-owned firms
• Between three and five awards for woman-owned firms
• Between two and four awards for firms with the HUBZone designation
• Between two and four awards for firms with the 8(a) designation

All competitors will go through a two-phase evaluation that starts with proof of having a top-secret facility clearance and a self-assessment of what the bidder says it can provide to Commerce.

Phase two will see the narrowed field of companies submit a further written submission outlining more on its overall technical proposal, past performance and pricing information.

Commerce will break out CATTS’ task orders across these six areas: chief information officer support, digital document and records management, managed service outsourcing and consulting, IT operations and maintenance, IT service management and cybersecurity requirements.