Protest count hits 10 for Army’s $50B MAPS vehicle
Gettyimages.com/ Saksit Sangtong
By
Nick Wakeman
Companies continue to bring up their issues with the solicitation, imperiling the Army’s planned September awards.
Additional companies have joined the protests swirling around the Army’s $50 billion Marketplace for the Acquisition of Professional Services vehicle.
Most of the protests that have emerged since the solicitation was released in June center around evaluation criteria that companies see as restrictive, ambiguities in the self-scoring scorecard, and how credits are applied for small business contracts.
The number of protests now stands at 10, with several companies submitting supplemental protests at the Government Accountability Office.
The protesters are:
- Aim for AdVantage
- Alpha Omega
- Alpha Tech Alliance
- Cinteot
- Integral Federal
- Intelligence Consulting Enterprise Solutions
- The JAAW Group
- Kearney & Co.
- Manutek Inc.
- NextGen Federal Systems
Due dates for the GAO decision range from Aug. 13 to Oct. 22, based on when the individual protest was filed.
GAO can combine the protests into a single decision. But given the range of the challenges, the agency is more likely to group similar issues together in a more than one decision.
The Army could also try to end the protests by taking corrective actions to address the complaints, but there may be too many issues for the service branch to do that.
The Army has indicated it wants to make awards in September, but cannot while protests are pending.
MAPS is the Army’s effort to create a multiple-award vehicle for professional services by consolidating multiple contracts into a single mechanism.