All questions now answered for $2.4B FAA IT services vehicle
Gettyimages.com/Michael H
By
Nick Wakeman
But the deadline for proposals regarding this multiple-award vehicle remains as is: Nov. 30.
The Federal Aviation Administration is sticking with its Nov. 30 deadline for companies to submit proposals in pursuit of a $2.4 billion IT services contract vehicle.
More than once, that deadline has shifted further to the right as the agency worked to answer every question it received on the solicitation from industry.
The FAA released those answers on Halloween, which met the 30-day minimum requirement between that action and the due date for bids.
Companies interested in the multiple-award IT Innovative Procurement for Strategic Sourcing contract should have time to incorporate what they learn from the answers into their proposals
The FAA released 96 questions and answers, which consolidated at least 400 individual questions the agency received on the ITIPSS procurement. Companies asked the FAA about past performance, task order structure, personnel qualifications and formatting.
Some of the questions apparently challenged page limits the FAA has placed on some sections. At least one person asked about using a smaller font, but the FAA said "No" to that.
Proposals must be written in Times-New Roman using 12-point font size: no exceptions.
Several questions tried to get more specifics about particular services they agency wants to buy through the vehicle. They sought more details on web application design and development, cybersecurity, mobile applications, and data center solutions.
The FAA's response was the same for each of these – details for specific services will come at the task order level.
From the beginning, the FAA has said it created the ITIPSS more broadly so agency users could have the flexibility to design task orders that met their specific needs.
ITIPSS will have up to 15 awards in total, with two or three of them for large businesses.
The breakdown for small business awards is three-to-six for uncategorized firms; two or three for the 8(a) designation; and another and two or three for the service-disabled, veteran-owned category.
Evaluation criteria centers around four technical evaluation factors:
- Factor one: Technical approach and plan
- Factor one: Management plan
- Factor three: Corporate experience
- Factor four: Past performance
Factors one and two are equal, as are factors three and four. But the first two factors carry more weight than the latter pair.
Price is not a factor in how the FAA will make awards, but the agency will conduct a total evaluated price analysis to determine if that number is fair and reasonable. The agency will not use a tradeoff between technical factors and price.
The agency said it will select the highest technically-rated proposals that also have a fair and reasonable price.
The Nov. 30 deadline is almost exactly six months after the original due date of April 29.
Unless there is another delay, it looks like some folks will be working over the Thanksgiving holiday.