11-10-20 The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued the draft solicitation for FirstSource III, a large-scale Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract for commercial IT commodity products and services. The ceiling on FirstSource III is notably higher than the previous iteration at $10 billion and will be a boon for small business federal contractors specializing in IT. The previous DHS-wide FirstSource II contract was awarded back in 2012, had a $3 Billion ceiling, and concluded in September of 2020. Sourcing metrics...

10/28/20 The Polaris small business vehicle is effectively a mulligan for the GSA’s $15 billion Alliant 2 Small Business contract. Alliant 2 SB was cancelled in early July after a full year of protests at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and through federal court. The cancellation came at the heels of the 8(a) STARS II ceiling challenges and the ongoing protests of the 2GIT (Second Generation IT Services), marking a period of difficulties for the GAO and small businesses looking...

10/13/20 NASA’s fifth iteration of its leading government-wide information technology contract vehicle SEWP has grown almost 40% in the last fiscal year. This means over $9 billion was spent through the GWAC in FY 2020 vs $6.7 billion in FY 2019.  In addition, the quantity of orders grew from 35,000 to 46,000. Ninety different agencies used the vehicle in FY 2020. NASA has also published several new projects/accomplishments from the past last year, including converting to 100 percent telework, a...

10/2/2020 While the General Services Administration decided to cancel on-ramp awards for new 8(a) Small Businesses in the 5b Pool of OASIS back in August, they proceeded to make 123 awards for Pools 1, 3, and 4 for unrestricted business. The three pools of the OASIS professional services contract were anticipated to have 120 awards, several companies received tied scores. This led to Pool 1 receiving 42 new companies, Pool 3 receiving 40, and Pool 4 receiving 41. Over 20...

Last month, the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) released the SITE III solicitation. SITE III is a follow-on from the E-SITE (Enhanced Solutions for the Information Technology Enterprise) contract vehicle from DIA which was awarded in 2015 and expires in December of 2020. As the roman numerals would suggest, the SITE III MAC is the third in a series of DIA enterprise information technology IDIQ vehicles. The contract will have a combined ceiling of $12.6 billion over the course of ten years...

The GSA’s (General Services Administration) decision to trim the 8(a) STARS II contract vehicle’s length by two years has created tension with small business interests and prompted a joint letter from both Congressional and Senate representatives. As noted in a previous EZGovOpps article, the GSA acted to increase the ceiling of STARS II from $15 billion to $22 billion to provide extra bandwidth for agencies to quickly respond to COVID-19 requirements by leveraging the vehicle. Much to some small business’...

The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has been using the eFAST BPA (blank purchasing agreement) for ten years now. Standing for the FAA Accelerated and Simplified Tasks, the contract vehicle allows federal workers to procure various contract types electronically including Firm-Fixed Price, Cost Reimbursable, Time and Materials, Labor Hour, and others. To this date, the program has awarded over $1.5 billion to small businesses. The 7th open season for eFast is now here, and the FAA is looking for new vendors...

The General Services Administration (GSA) is currently hard at work provisioning the third iteration of its popular 8(a) Streamlined Technology Application Resources for Services (STARS III). The draft solicitation was released on August 9, 2019 and it was originally anticipated that the final solicitation would be released sometime in December 2019. Unfortunately, it was been pushed back to September of 2020, however recent reports suggest the 3rd week of July. The good news to the 787 8(a) contractors currently on...

The DHS Office of Procurement Operations (OPO) is planning to release the FirstSource III requirements draft by the end of June. As of May 19th, a short document which contains the scope of the draft was made available on beta.sam.gov. FirstSource III is a large-scale Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract for commercial IT commodity products and services. The previous DSH-wide FirstSource II contract was awarded back in 2012 had a $3 Billion ceiling. It will be coming to a...

The Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) located in Patuxent River, MD, had announced back on March 13th, 2020 its intention to procure supplies and incidental services competitively to support Program Manager Strike Planning and Execution Systems (PMA-281) software/hardware development and sustainment efforts. That came to fruition recently with twelve awardees announced (see below for details). The contract ceiling is $498 million with an expected 5-year duration. PMA-281 provides warfighter strike planning and execution capabilities via operationally relevant, programmatically-sound material solutions....