ITES-3H protests continue to grow

A ninth company has joined the list of companies protesting their exclusion from the final source selection round of the $5 billion Army ITES-3H contract.

Integration Technologies Group Inc. is the latest to file a pre-award protest with the Government Accountability Office.

As a reminder the other protestors are:

• FCN Inc.
• Blue Tech Inc.
• Telos Corp.
• Red River Computer Co.
• Carahsoft Technology Corp.
• Technology Integration Group
• iGov
• Dell Federal Systems

The contract for hardware, software and related services has already been delayed, leading the Army to extend ITES-2H twice. It is now set to expire in early summer of 2015, and awards for ITES-3H are expected in spring of 2015.

According to the GAO bid protest docket, early to mid-November is the due date for a decision on these protests.

Of course, the Army can take a corrective action, which would negate the protests [causing their dismissal by GAO] and most likely add the protestors back into the competition.

What intrigues me is that these protesters are well-established resellers and, in the case of Dell, a major product manufacturer. So what was it about their proposals that led the Army to dismiss them? There are sure to be some lessons learned there.

So, I would like to see the protests go through the entire process because that's probably the only way to get some insights into the Army's reasoning.

We'll know in about a month how far the protests will go. The Army has 30 days to respond to the protests. It is usually within that window that an agency decides if it is going to take a corrective action.

But even if these pre-award protests are resolved quickly, you can expect more protests once the actual awards are made. My expectation is that ITES-2H will be extended again.

That’s great for the incumbents, which includes Dell, but probably not the scenario the Army envisioned for the third iteration of this contract.