Three contractors tapped to develop smart Humvee replacements

December 27, 2012 by

The Army and Marine Corps awarded three companies development contracts Wednesday for their next generation of wheeled tactical vehicles, which will require a gigabit speed local area network to support onboard computers, communications and electronic warfare systems.

AM General, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Oshkosh Corp. won 27-month engineering and development contracts valued at $64.5 million, $66.3 million and $56.4 million respectively to produce 22 prototype Joint Light Tactical Vehicles each. The services will evaluate the prototypes at Army test centers in Arizona, Maryland and New Mexico.

The services then will select a single contractor to manufacture up to 50,000 JLTVs for the Army and another 5,000 for the Marine Corps. The development contracts specify that the services will pay no more than $250,000 per JLTV, putting the value of the production contract for 55,000 vehicles at $13.8 billion.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2012/08/three-contractors-tapped-develop-sample-humvee-replacements/57622/.

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Growth in federal contracts called unsustainable

July 26, 2012 by

Federal and industry officials questioned Wednesday whether changes are needed to rein in the growth of multiple award contracts, especially those run by individual agencies.

In the years since a series of acquisition reforms were enacted starting in the mid-1990s, multiple award contracts have proliferated. Under such arrangements, vendors are chosen to provide a set of goods or services and then compete among themselves for individual orders from federal agencies.

According to a Bloomberg Government analysis, the amount of contract dollars obligated under multiple award contracts has doubled since fiscal 2006 to more than $83 billion in 2011. In 2006, 427 such contracts existed across government. As of last year, the number had risen to 1,182. The biggest growth area is in agency-specific contracts.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2012/07/growth-federal-contracts-called-unsustainable/56857/?oref=govexec_today_nl.

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OFPP nominee speaks about his qualifications, acquisition workforce, contractor compensation, and multiple award contracts

May 14, 2012 by

Joe Jordan defended his qualifications last Wednesday to be the next administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. But the concerns may be less about Jordan and more about the shoes he has to fill.

Jordan, who currently is a senior adviser to Jeff Zients, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, would replace Dan Gordon, who spent more than 20 years in federal procurement. Jordan also has less experience than the previous five OFPP administrators.

Keep reading this article at http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=522&sid=2859028.

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GSA renames $48B IT contract

April 11, 2012 by

The General Services Administration’s professional services contract Integrations is now named OASIS, officials said March 28.

OASIS stands for One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services.

The contract is still in the pre-request for proposals stage and is expected to have a ceiling of $48 billion.

“Selecting a name for a solution is no small task; a name must not only be recognizable, but it must also convey the solution’s purpose and value,” Jim Ghiloni, the recently named program executive officer of OASIS, wrote March 28 in a post on GSA Interact.

OASIS is an integrated professional services contract with a support IT component. The principle services include management and consulting, professional engineering, and logistics and financial services. Officials have said it will be a hybrid contract with commercial and non-commercial items available through it. It will also allow for all types of contracts at the task order level.

OASIS will be a multiple-award, multi-agency task and delivery order contract. GSA officials say it will be more like a multiple-award contract or a governmentwide acquisition contract than a Multiple Award Schedule.

With the name-change, officials are focusing on the next stage. They are coming together from FAS’ Office of General Supplies and Services, Office of Information Technology Services, Office of Assisted Acquisition Services, and others to work on arranging the contract to suit agencies’ needs.

FAS also needs to finalize and post the contract in the Office of Management and Budget’s MAX Federal website. By posting it there, the government can see if another contract is already selling these same services. The Office of Federal Procurement Policy has tried to avoid duplicative contracts.

They plan on establishing a customer working group and continue to use GSA’s Interact website to gather input and share updates.

“We believe the name OASIS, generated with input from industry members, is representative of the true value this vehicle will bring to the federal government,” said Steve Kempf, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service at GSA.

About the Author: Matthew Weigelt is a senior writer covering acquisition and procurement for Federal Computer Week.  This article was published on Mar. 28, 2012 at http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2012/03/28/integrations-oasis-gsa.aspx?s=wtdaily_290312.

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Government contracting landscape shifts as task orders rise

November 8, 2011 by

Government contractors need to prepare not only for a more austere future for government spending, but also adapt to a shifting landscape that is favoring task orders over traditional acquisition contracts, a leading government forecasting group said today.

Among the forces reshaping that landscape are agency efforts to accelerate the delivery of technology and other projects. One way they’re doing that is by breaking projects into smaller, more modular chunks. That has resulted in a growing use of task orders, said  

Kevin Plexico, senior vice president for research and analysis services at Deltek, speaking at Deltek’s FedFocus 2012 forum today.

Multiple award task order based contracts permit agencies to establish a limited set of companies, typically with specific skills, to compete for individual projects under a pre-negotiated set of terms and conditions. They also help deal with the fact that though government contract spending has increased by 50% over the past five years, the size of the acquisition workforce has remained flat.

Consequently the volume of multiple award task orders has more than doubled over the past five years (in light blue bars in chart above), while spending through GSA Schedule 70 and other contract vehicles has remained relatively flat.

Plexico outlined these and other facets of the 2012 federal budget that are likely to impact the government contracting community.At the heart of Deltek’s outlook is the administration decision to lower discretionary government spending to $1.043 trillion, from $1.211 trillion in fiscal 2011. (See full slide presentation here.)

“We’re not talking about that the federal budget is falling precipitously,” he said, trying to put the expected budget cuts in perspective. “Put in commercial terms, you see much more fluctuation in commercial markets than you see in the government market.”

But contracting firms which have benefited from ongoing government projects of the past can expect to see fewer contracts and fewer players getting those contracts in the coming fiscal years, he said.

“The (federal) budget environment is leading to a much more competitive landscape for contractors,” he said. “We’ll see companies protecting the work they’re doing,” and having to look at other opportunities to grow, including acquiring other companies, other skill sets, or realign with companies which have existing contracts, he said.

“Companies must adapt to an accelerated proposal environment brought on by task order contracting,” he said.

That point was brought home by Homeland Security Department CIO Richard Spires and Dave Wennergren, assistant deputy chief management officer for the Department of Defense, who spoke at the forum. Both stressed how new budget pressures were forcing the adoption of agile – or rapid cycle, smaller increment-development in a growing number of projects, and with that trend, the need to accelerate IT acquisition.

“We’re at a tipping point,” Spires said, referring to expectations of “real cuts in IT” at DHS heading into the next fiscal year, and the need to find lower price points for s across DHS, at lower price points and develop them more quickly.

Spires acknowledged that DHS is still coming to grips with how to consolidate 132 human resource information systems and nine learning management systems down to a much smaller number. The only way to get that done, he said, involved getting all the right players in a room and hammer out what those shared solutions needed to be and established which existing platforms were the most capable of supporting them.

Wennergren added that an essential element to making agile development work is a foundation of enterprise architecture that ensures projects and shared solutions are properly aligned with the underlying mission and business needs of agencies.

For contractors, especially those working on Defense Department projects, the new fiscal austerity will mean not only more fixed priced and task order contracts, but also more risk, said Brian Haney, Deltek vice president, client services. He reiterated “If you’re not a modular development shop and you’re looking to get into DoD, you might consider developing strategic relations” with contractors who are.

– by Wyatt Kash – Published by Aol Government - November 3, 2011 – http://gov.aol.com/2011/11/03/government-contracting-landscape-shifts-as-task-orders-rise/

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Homeland Security relying more on fixed-price contracts, report says

July 26, 2011 by

The share of Homeland Security Department contracts that fulfill the Obama administration’s preference for fixed-price awards rose steadily over the past four years to reach 10.3 percent, or $7.5 billion in fiscal 2010, a new think tank study reports.

That rise followed an earlier hike in dependence on time-and-materials or cost-reimbursement contracts in the wake of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005, according the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Its study, “DHS Contract Spending and the Supporting Industrial Base,” released Thursday, analyzed federal data from from fiscal 2004 to fiscal 2010, dealing primarily with service contracts. It incorporated input from DHS officials.

Homeland Security’s move toward fixed-price awards coincided with reduced use of purchase orders and contracts awarded without competition, the report noted. David Berteau, the project’s director who runs CSIS’ defense-industrial initiatives group, applauded efforts by the Office of Management and Budget to “require agencies for the first time to use the Federal Procurement Data System as a management tool to track improvements and enhance competition.”

The report also noted a doubling in the use of multiple-contract awards at Homeland Security and a 10.6 percent yearly decline in single-contract awards. “Multiple awards not only help create competition,” Berteau said, “they help the agency decide what it is seeking in the contract’s requirements.” The value of contracts awarded without competition shrunk from a high of $7 billion in 2006 to $1.6 billion in 2010, the report said.

Homeland Security has been successfully adhering to Small Business Administration guidelines for awarding contracts to small firms. “Unlike the Defense Department, which has a growing share going to large companies, DHS has a broad diversity of companies, which also emphasizes competition,” Berteau said.

The agency controls about half the contracts dealing with homeland security, with the Pentagon running a quarter and the remainder coming out of the Justice, State, Energy and Health and Human Services departments.

The portion of contracts run out of the Office of the Secretary at Homeland Security rose 900 percent and in 2010 accounted for the largest share of contract spending, the report noted. The bulk of this increase reflects the recent transfer of the Federal Protective Service, which supervises many private contractors, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Homeland Security’s Office of Procurement Operations, within the secretary’s office, the report said. Berteau said the growth is not necessarily a reflection of the management approach of Homeland Security leadership.

The report’s list of the top 20 Homeland Security contractors indicated a flip in priorities, noted project co-director Guy Ben-Ari. “It shows the dynamic nature of DHS contracting, with less emphasis today on disaster response and more on the rise of IT and defense awards,” he said.

In 2005, the top five DHS contracting companies were Circle B, Integrated Coast Guard Systems, Fairmont Homes, Unisys and Graham. In 2010, the top five in were IBM, Lockheed Martin, Integrated Coast Guard Systems, Unisys and Accenture.

Established in 2002, Homeland Security is the only national security agency whose budget was not significantly increased in the years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Berteau said. Hence Homeland Security planners must remain aware that they don’t have “the same cushion for the looming drawdown” in federal spending as do other agencies.

–  by Charles S. Clark – GovExec.com – July 21, 2011 – at http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=48312&printerfriendlyvers=1

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