Pair of incumbents protest lost Air Force contracts
By
Nick Wakeman
Two incumbents on the Air Force's NetCents 2 Products contract for IT hardware have filed protests after not winning spots on its replacement.
An initial batch of protests are in over the Air Force’s replacement vehicle for the NetCents 2 Products contract to purchase IT hardware.
Two incumbents have filed protests because they were left off of the 2nd Generation Information Technology blanket purchase agreement known as 2GIT. The Air Force turned to the General Services Administration to run the competition rather than keep the work in-house.
The initial result is a potential $5.5 billion blanket purchase agreement with 75 vendors, but missing from the list of winners are Red River Computer Co. and Blue Tech Inc. Both held positions on NetCents 2 Products.
It is too early to tell if other companies will file protests, but incumbents fighting for a lost position on a multiple-award vehicle is not a surprise.
It is also too early to tell yet if these protests signal trouble for 2GIT. Trouble seems to be in NetCents' DNA as each iteration of the contract got hit with multiple protests and rounds of corrective actions.
The Air Force's move to GSA in part was to mitigate those problems, especially for a hardware and software vehicle. The Air Force has kept its services and applications contracts in house.
Red River filed its protest Nov. 8 and Blue Tech filed on Nov. 12. The Government Accountability Office will likely bundle them into a single case, so we are looking at a decision from GAO in mid-February.