DLA taken to court over $12B contract
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By
Nick Wakeman
Seven companies are challenging their elimination from the competition for this Defense Logistics Agency IT and professional services vehicle known as JETS 2.0.
A group of disappointed bidders have gone to court after their elimination from the competition for places on the $12 billion Defense Logistics Agency contract.
Maximus, Harmonia Holdings, RCHP LLC, FreeAlliance, Arch Systems, D&G Support Services and Chickasaw Service Solutions have all filed protests over the past few weeks at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
DLA is running a two-phase competition for the multiple-award J6 Enterprise Technology Services 2.0 contract, also known as JETS 2. The protesters were eliminated in phase one.
Details on why the protesters feel they were unfairly eliminated isn’t available yet because the filings with the court are sealed.
According to the solicitation, phase one covered the evaluation of technical proposals. To reach phase two, a proposal needed to attain an “acceptable” rating.
JETS 2 has 12 task areas such as network and telecom services, technology services, enterprise service delivery, and cybersecurity. Other task areas include defense business systems lifecycle management, program management, cloud hosting and application modernization.
The current JETS 1 contract was awarded in 2016 and has 145 incumbent companies, of which Harmonia is the only incumbent among the protesters. JETS 1 has a $6 billion ceiling and its last date to order is Jan. 3, 2025.
Four of the six protesters originally filed at the Government Accountability Office – D&G, Maximus, Chickasaw and Arch Systems.
Storage Strategies Inc. and Niveus Systems also filed protests at GAO, but have not yet filed at the court.
GAO has dismissed all protests because the court has a higher jurisdiction to enforce bid protest rulings.
DLA has told the court it agreed to not make any awards for JETS 2 until August. The agency can continue to evaluate proposals.