DISA opens $17.5B Encore III IT services for business

The Defense Information Systems Agency can move ahead with its $17.5 billion Encore III contract for enterprise IT services now that all large business protests have been resolved.

The Government Accountability Office denied three protests that had been filed against the awards. Those are all currently under a protective order. A fourth protest had been dismissed earlier.

While the full-and-open portion of the contract vehicle can move forward, the small business portion still faces one last protest and that should be resolved within the next few days.

Encore has been DISA’s primary vehicle for buying a wide range of IT services. It has 19 performance areas such as enterprise IT planning and policy, business process re-engineering, network support and cloud professional services.

The contract has a five-year base and five one-year options.

The large business protesters -- NCI Inc., Peerless Technologies Corp. and Data Systems Analysts -- complained about the price and cost evaluations. And in one case objected to the technical qualifications of another bidder.

More details are to come as GAO has not released its decision yet.

DISA said it received 72 bids for the contract and 20 companies won:

• 22nd Century Technologies Inc.
• AASKl Technology Inc.
• Ace Info Solutions Inc.
• ActioNet Inc.
• AECOM XNet LLC
• Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. (incumbent)
• CACI International (incumbent)
• CSRA LLC (incumbent)
• ECS Federal LLC
• General Dynamics
• IAP C4ISR
• IndraSoft Inc.
• Leidos Innovations Corp. (incumbent, thanks to acquisition of Lockheed Martin’s IT business)
• ManTech International (incumbent)
• NES Associates LLC (now part of CSRA)
• NetCentrics Corp.
• Next Tier Concepts Inc.
• Phacil Inc.
• Qbase LLC
• Solers Inc. (incumbent)

Only six of the winners are returning incumbents and one of those in Solers is moving up from the Encore II small business contract.

Encore III is a different vehicle from its predecessor contract because of its lowest price, technically acceptable evaluation criteria.

Several incumbents declined to bid. And some that bid and did not win but did not protest. Science Applications International Corp. was one that submitted a bid but was not given a spot.

SAIC will focus instead on working with small business partners on the small business portion of the contract. Unisys also was an unsuccessful bidder that declined to file a protest.

But some incumbents such as IBM and Vencore did not bid. Other incumbents from Encore II not on Encore III include DXC Technologies, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.

Some sources have told me that some of the larger companies are banking more on DISA’s Systems Engineering Technology and Innovation contact, a $7.5 billion vehicle expected to be awarded this spring.

There also was frustration that Encore III was LPTA. “There was no room for innovation,” one person said.