More protests, delays for $12B Army ITES-3S contract

The Army continues to deal with pre-award protests over its $12 billion ITES-3S vehicle, and it appears likely they will push awards into 2017.

The Army had expected to make 24 awards, including 14 to small businesses, sometime this month, but it cannot make awards while protests are pending.

Several protests were dismissed in November. Some of the protests were dismissed because the Army was taking corrective action to the solicitation. At least two were dismissed because the protesting company didn’t respond to the Army’s response to the protest. And one protest was withdrawn.

All of the pending protests involve small businesses. The companies with active protests are:

• ActioNet
• CKA LLC
• Future Research Corp.
• MicroTechnologies

Decisions on the ActioNet, Future Research Corp. and MicroTech protest are expected in mid-January. A decision on the CKA protest isn’t expected until March.

Most of the protests center around being eliminated from the competition ahead of the final award decision.

A source is telling me that the Army is following a pattern set by the OASIS competition in that proposals are being tossed because of rule violations such as how it is formatted or for exceeding the length stipulated in the solicitation.

Bidders apparently have little wiggle room and the Army isn’t offering many second chances.

ITES-3S is the third iteration of the contract which the Army has been using for at least 10 years to buy IT solutions and services that support its global IT infrastructure.

It has always been a multiple-award contract with the prime contractors competing for task orders.

According to Deltek, more than $11 billion in task orders has flowed through the vehicle.