Given an unexpected number of proposals to evaluate, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is delaying its source selection for border surveillance project by about six months, the agency says.
When CBP issued its Request for Proposal for the Integrated Fixed Tower (IFT) program and then received industry proposals in June, it expected to select a winner by December (Defense Daily, June 7). Now the agency doesn’t expect to make an award until the fourth quarter of FY ’13, which is by the end of Sept. 2013.
In a FedBizOpps announcement last week, CBP says “it is conducting source selection on a lager number of proposals than originally estimated.”
CBP also says it expects to conduct system maturity and deployment capability demonstrations at the end of the second quarter of FY ’13, which is by next March.
Mark Borkowski, the head of acquisitions at CBP, told Congress in September that a delay in the IFT program would be expected given the need to review a larger number of proposals than anticipated (Defense Daily, Sept. 24).
Under the IFT program, which was borne out of the termination of the Secure Border Initiative Network, CBP hopes to deploy fixed surveillance and communications towers along select portions of the United States border with Mexico.