Applying the lessons from the first go-around, the Air Force will do more to maintain a continual dialogue with industry throughout the process of evaluating the proposals for the service’s new combat search and rescue helicopter, the Air Force’s top weapon buyer said Nov. 20.
“We will have several interim debriefs of all of the offerors so that they know exactly where their strengths are and exactly where their weaknesses are, so that they can go off and be ready when they submit their final proposal and they will know exactly where they stand relative to their capabilities and also to their cost,” Air Force Acquisition Executive Sue Payton said last Tuesday during a meeting with reporters in the Pentagon.
The Air Force issued a new request for proposals (RFP) on Nov. 15 for its Combat Search and Rescue Replacement Vehicle (CSAR-X). The document states that the anticipated contract award is in July 2008.
The Air Force wants 141 new rescue helicopters to replace its aging inventory of HH-60G Pave Hawks. Last November, it chose the Boeing [BA] HH-47 tandem-rotor helicopter over the Lockheed Martin [LMT] US101 and Sikorsky [UTX] HH-92 platforms. But two rounds of successful protests by the two losing teams with the Government Accountability Office stemming from how the Air Force handled the original evaluation caused the service to agree to open the competition to new bids by the same three offerors.
Under the forthcoming evaluation, the Air Force will do a better job of providing feedback to industry than it did during the first source selection, Payton said.
“Probably one of the areas that we could have done better…is to have a more thorough debriefing earlier in the cycle before the final proposals came in,” she said.
All told, she said, her office plans to meet “at least four times between now and when we award” with each of the offerors.
“We will also be red teaming…the final debriefs for the losers,” Payton said. “We will make sure that we are direct. We will make sure that we are communicating exactly why someone loses so they don’t ever get up and walk away from a table and not know why they weren’t selected as the winner.”
“The bottom line,” she continued, “not only are we talking more, we are documenting more.”
As part of the new round of competition, Payton’s shop had planned to host equal information disclosure (EID) briefings for each of the three teams to ensure that each was on a level playing field. This was most relevant to Boeing, since as the winner of the original competition, the company said it was not made privy to competition-sensitive data as Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky were when they received their debriefs on why they had lost.
However, Boeing never received the EID briefing since one of the other teams reportedly took issue with the idea.
Boeing has said it did not want the issue to hold up the competition anymore, confident that it will prevail once again.
And Payton said Nov. 20 she did not think the EID issue is of concern.
“Boeing seems happy,” she said. “There was a discussion. I haven’t heard anything that they have any objections…
“You have got to understand,” she continued, “a lot of this stuff is about a year and a half old. If I was somebody in this competition, I am out there with a whole lot of new stuff, so I don’t necessarily think there is an issue there.
“At this point we are hearing that all of the offerors are ready, gung ho and they have no complaints. So I think we are in really good shape there,” Payton said.