Two bidding industry teams for the follow-on program to the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) will be adequate for a successful competition even though the service delayed the release of the request for proposals (RFP) for months partly to explore ways to entice more companies, Capt. Shawn Hendricks, the program manager for the Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN), said.
“We wanted to maximize competition. We think we have done that,” Hendricks told reporters at a media roundtable Friday.
The Navy had initially planned in a draft RFP to require prospective industry teams to demonstrate experience at operating a network with a minimum of 100,000 user stations, but that was lowered to 40,000 in subsequent drafts and in the final RFP. The revision so far has not produced any new teams than the ones already in the mix a year ago.
“I have built what I believe is a fair and open competition,” Hendricks said, adding he believes that the two industry teams are capable of doing the work outlined under NGEN.
The competition is “as adequate as I can make it within the constraints that I had,” Hendricks said. Whether more teams choose to join is “business decision,” he said.
Hewlett-Packard [HP] is the prime contractor for NMCI. The incumbent has partnered with Northrop Grumman [NOC], IBM [IBM], AT&T [T] and Lockheed Martin [LMT] to submit an NGEN bid. A second team has been formed by Harris Corp. [HRS] and Computer Sciences Corp. [CSC] and includes General Dynamics [GD] and Verizon Communications [VZ].
The final RFP was released May 9, months later than the planned publication in December. Navy officials have said they wanted to ensure they received plenty of feedback from industry to get the requirements right and to create a fair and effective competition.
The two contracts, one for enterprise services and another for transport services, could reach a total value of $5.3 billion over the next five years. Bids are due by July 18 and the Navy and anticipates awarding the contracts in February. The transition from NMCI to NGEN is scheduled for April 2014.
NGEN is intended to provide secure, net-centric data and services to 800,000 Navy and Marine Corps personnel and connect 400,000 workstations. NMCI already represents the largest intranet in the U.S. government and began in 2000 under a contract with Electronic Data Systems, which HP acquired in 2008.
Before joining the HP team, Lockheed Martin had been considering bidding as a prime contractor and possibly partnering with Dell [DELL]. Lockheed Martin did not give a reason for opting against a prime bid. A spokesman for Dell would not say whether the company remained interested in competing for NGEN.