By Ann Roosevelt
Under an amendment to the original solicitation for the Army’s new Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV), contractors offering proposals now have until May 21 instead of April 26 to answer the request for proposals for the planned technology demonstration (TD) phase.
The GCV is the Army’s modernization effort to replace the terminated Manned Ground Vehicle (MGV) portion of the Future Combat Systems.
General Dynamics [GD] and BAE Systems worked together on the MGV.
BAE and Northrop Grumman [NOC] last month announced a teaming agreement to pursue GCV (Defense Daily, March 2).
Additionally, within 14 days of the proposal submissions, each offerer must be prepared to provide a walk-through of the cost volume of their proposal to improve the government’s understanding of the structure and organization of the submitted volume. The walk through will be held at the Program Executive Office-Integration facility in Warren, Mich.
The Army wants delivery of the first production GCV seven years from the award of the TD phase contract. The requirements defined in the production vehicle call for a balanced design based on risk reduction and requirements refinement accomplished during TD and engineering and manufacturing development (EMD), documents state.
The GCV RFP expects a two-phase approach: TD and EMD.
The Army may choose as many as three contractors for the 27-month TD phase.
For the EMD phase, the government plans to limit competition to those contractors working on the TD phase. If the competition is limited to those with TD contracts, a best value source selection would be conducted to select EMD phase contractors. However, this strategy would “require approval for other than full and open competition,” the amendment said. If the plan is not approved, there would be a full and open competition.
The contract would be incrementally funded, with estimated funds for all contracts for fiscal year 2010 at $54 million, and $600 million for FY ’11.
The service advises that an employee from each of the firms of: Jacobs Technology, MITRE Corp., KDMS2, Optimetrics, Network Zone Inc., HPTi, Scientific Research Corp., and Technical Professional Services Inc. may serve as evaluators in the source selection process. These employees may require access to proprietary information in proposals.
Thus, proposers must contact these individuals and reach agreement that the offerer’s information is protected from unauthorized use or disclosure.