OASIS draft RFP due

The General Services Administration is centralizing complex professional services solutions across government into the upcoming “OASIS” contract vehicle, according to Jeffrey Koses, director of the GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service’s Office of Acquisition Operations.

OASIS —One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services— is an anticipated $12 billion set of contract vehicles to deliver complex professional services requirements. OASIS Small will be a 100% small business set-aside.

The draft Request for Proposals is expected to be ready by late summer or autumn, with the final RFP coming out in the winter. It will cover program management, consulting, logistics, professional engineering services, and financial services.

The GSA also is looking at adding security, environmental and energy services to OASIS, but not IT services, Koser said at a recent industry event.

OASIS will reduce costs to the government and limit duplication, Koses said.

“...OASIS will reduce costs to the government and limit duplication,” Koses said.

Half of the government’s current spending on professional services is in cost-reimbursable contracts, Koses said. By expanding OASIS to include all contract types, including fixed price, it will lower costs and provide more flexibility to agencies and vendors, he said.

“In the last year, many agencies have been exploring professional services (contract) vehicles,” Koses said, adding that multiple vehicles would take many staff hours and taxpayer dollars to accomplish. “We believe it is core to GSA to centralize that,” he said.

At a time of great fiscal constraints and uncertainty, contracting vehicles such as OASIS are aimed to help agencies reduce duplication and cut costs, Koses said.

However, OASIS also has been met with some skepticism.

“Do we really need another large vehicle that contractors will spend months, if not years, and millions of dollars bidding on?” Nick Wakeman, editor ofWashington Technology, asked in a recent blog post. “And of course, there will be protests which will delay the expected benefits of OASIS by years.”

Army’s ITES 3H pending

The Army’s upcoming $5 billion Information Technology Enterprise Solutions 3 Hardware (ITES 3H) contract could be a significant vehicle for some vendors.

“With the government concentrating more of its purchases into large IDIQ contracts in recent years, ITES 3H likely will be one of very few opportunities to sell small computing equipment to the Army,” according to a recent GovWin blog.

The ITES 3H contract replaces the expiring ITES 2H contract, which has six incumbents. The Army expects up to eight awards for the new vehicle, with three reserved for small businesses.

The primary NAICS code is 334111: Electronic Computer Manufacturing. The small business size standard will be 1,000 employees, according to GovWin.

Contractors will be required to support up to a Top Secret security clearance with Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI), but most orders will require only a Secret security clearance.

Most work will be based in Fort Belvoir, VA.

The contract includes servers, workstations, thin clients, desktops and notebooks, storage systems, networking equipment, network printers, cables, connectors and accessories, video equipment products.