By Geoff Fein
The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) awarded 26 indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract for the ENCORE II Information Technology Solutions program to provide information technology services and solutions for military agencies, the company said.
The contracts, awarded to 14 large and 12 small contractors, took place May 2 and April 24 respectively, and followed a Government Accountability Office (GAO) decision on a protest filed in early 2007.
The ENCORE II program will run for five years with five one-year renewal options with a ceiling value of up to $12.2 billion, according to DISA.
DISA’s guaranteed minimum amount is $10,000 per each contractor, the agency said.
According to DISA, the contracts include provisions for firm, fixed price, time and materials or labor hour and cost reimbursement task orders.
The winners range from large contractors such as Raytheon [RTN], BAE Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI [CAI], IBM [IBM], L-3 [LLL], Lockheed Martin [LMT], Northrop Grumman [NOC] to smaller firms such as Maryland-based NETCONN Solutions, Virginia-based Computing Technologies, Inc., Tennessee-based Jacobs Sverdrup, and Alabama-based Analytical Services, Inc.
ENCORE II will help military agencies, the Defense Department and other agencies of the federal government transition to DoD’s joint Global Information Grid supporting command and control, intelligence, combat support, and network-centric operations, according to Raytheon.
“The period of performance for the contracts is 1 June 2008 through 31 May 2018 (a five-year base period and five one-year options). Performance will be at various locations within the Continental United States (CONUS) and Outside CONUS (OCONUS),” according to DISA.
In the solicitation, the government provided notification that it anticipated multiple contract awards resulting from this solicitation in two separate categories–Full and Open (F&O) and Small Business Set-Aside (SBSA). A total of 16 proposals were received under the F&O Category and 49 proposals were received under the SBSA Category, DISA added.
In early 2007, IBM, Unisys Corp. [UIS], Northrop Grumman and Computer Science Corp. [CSC], protested DISA’s Encore II awards. The companies, according to the GAO’s decision, “challenged the agency’s technical, past performance and price evaluation, the conduct of exchanges with the offerors, and the source selection decision.”
In May 2007, GAO found that DISA’s exchanges with the offerors, which allowed a majority of the highest rated offerors to revise their proposals in a material way, were not clarifications but were discussions.
Because GAO sustained the protests, they did not address the protestors’ challenge to DISA’s evaluation and source selection decision, given GAO’s recommendation that DISA open the competition to conduct discussions with offerors whose proposals are found to be in the competitive range.
“We recommend that the agency establish a competitive range and conduct meaningful discussions with offerors whose proposals are found to be within the competitive range, obtain and evaluate revised proposals, and make a new source selection decision,” GAO said.