Army mulls bundling billions in professional services, IT vehicles
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By
Ross Wilkers
The service branch wants to create a consolidated and comprehensive marketplace that could replace two large vehicles with $49 billion in combined ceilings.
The Army has started to give industry a glimpse at how the service branch plans to approach the recompetes for two of its major go-to contract vehicles for professional and IT-centric services.
In essence, what the Army is currently calling by the acronym ACCESS will be the successor to the Responsive Strategic Services Sourcing vehicle. RS3 was awarded via multiple rounds between 2017 and 2019 with 260 companies currently involved in that potential $37.4 billion vehicle.
The branch's vision for its Army Contracting Command Enterprise for Sourcing Services acquisition is to create a more consolidated and comprehensive marketplace for buying staff augmentation and other services. May 3 is the deadline for responses to the sources sought notice issued Wednesday regarding ACCESS.
For that consolidation push, the Army said it is also considering whether to combine the scope of ACCESS with another vehicle more concentrated on IT systems.
The Army issued a request for information January regarding ITES-4S, the follow-on to the Information Technology Enterprise Solution-3 Services contract awarded in 2018. That vehicle has 135 companies currently involved and a $12 billion ceiling to compete for.
RS3 is currently slated to expire in May 2027 and ITES-3S in September of that same year, according to Deltek data.
A combination of requirements from ACCESS and ITES-4S would cover engineering; research, development, test and evaluation; logistics; acquisition and strategic planning; education and training; medical-based logistical services; and IT services.
Respondents should give the Army feedback on the idea of bringing those two contracts together into a single multiple-award vehicle, along with how the branch could separate the awards into different groups.
The Army has obligated approximately $6.6 billion, or 18%, of the RS3 ceiling to-date. GovTribe data lists MAG Aerospace, General Dynamics, Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI International and Aranea Solutions as the top five task order recipients.
The ITES-3S contract has seen $2.6 billion in task order obligations flow through it, or around 22% of the total ceiling. GovTribe data lists Science Applications International Corp., IBM, Agile Defense, Business Mission Edge and General Dynamics IT as the top five task order recipients.