After months of preparation and discussion, the General Services Administration issued its final request for proposals for the massive “OASIS” multiple-award contract vehicles for professional services.

The OASIS (One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services) program consists of two groups of contracts--unrestricted and small business. The small business track is a 100% small business set-aside. The unrestricted track includes a 50% small business subcontracting goal.

While GSA has not put a ceiling value on OASIS, industry sources have valued it at up to $60 billion over 10 years.

GSA officials have described OASIS as an effort to streamline professional services contracting to make it more efficient, less duplicative and less costly while also increasing focus on socioeconomic contracting goals.

GSA is touting great potential for small vendors in the huge OASIS program, including possible new work from the Air Force.

But the program also continues to attract controversy, including two pre-award protests. Some industry members say OASIS, while innovative, may be too complex. There also is a claim that GSA may have leaned too far in favoring small business in the program.

The GSA said in a news release it consulted with federal agencies and with more than 100 contractors in one-on-one sessions to prepare the RFPs.

“Working very closely with federal agencies on requirements and soliciting industry feedback were two key parts of the development process for the final RFPs,” Federal Acquisitions Service Commissioner Tom Sharpe said in the news release. “As a result of the tremendous amount of input we received, we believe OASIS will fill the substantial need for a hybrid, government-wide acquisition vehicle that has great potential to reduce the number of full-and-open procurements across government and drive extraneous costs out of the acquisition process.”

SIX CORE DISCIPLINES

OASIS covers six core disciplines: program management, management consulting, scientific, logistics, engineering and financial management. A seventh category covers ancillary support, including support for information technology.

Bids are due Sept. 17. Questions on the RFPs are due by Aug. 20.

The small business awards will be neither Lowest Price Technically Acceptable nor tradeoffs, the RFP states, adding that “for OASIS SB, the best value basis for awards will be determined by the Highest Technically Rated Offerors with a Fair and Reasonable Price.”

Awards could be made as early as October with work beginning in January 2014, according to Deltek.

The contracts are to be divided into the seven pools based on NAICS codes. The 128-page solicitation for small business professional services describes numerous types of services within each discipline, as well as project lifecycle phases in which the services may be needed.

GSA officials have said they expect to make 40 awards in each pool, which could result in up to 280 unrestricted awards and 280 small business awards.

PROTESTS FILED

However, as of Aug. 12, two pre-award protests had been filed against OASIS claiming it limits competition.

Rudy Sutherland, the head of practice for Aljucar, Anvil-Incus and Co., confirmed to Federal News Radio that his firm filed a bid protest at the agency level.

“We are fighting for Smalls to be able to form joint ventures and get credit for their collective past performance in order to compete for the scale of task orders that (large companies) will exclusively be able to pursue through the Unrestricted version of OASIS,” Sutherland wrote in a LinkedIn group message describing the protest.

In addition, USfalcon Inc. filed its objection to the OASIS RFP with the Government Accountability Office.

TOO MUCH SMALL BIZ?

Meanwhile, customer demand is growing, particularly for OASIS’ small business track, Jim Ghiloni, director of the OASIS program management office, told Federal Times in a recent article.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center plans to use the OASIS small business contract for procuring up to $500 million a year in services, Ghiloni said, according to the newspaper.

In addition, Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, wrote in a recent blog entry that the Air Force intends to shift major engineering support contracts to OASIS small business.

That is a “bad idea,” he wrote, because it could “distort the industrial base” by pushing too much work to small firms and damaging the desired balance of firm sizes. “Has anyone thought about the implications of totally dedicating entire segments of work to one size category? It doesn’t appear so,” he wrote.

However, an Air Force spokeswoman said the service could not confirm any plans to shift work to OASIS because it is too early in the process. “The Air Force can't speculate on which contracts may be best served by OASIS,” Capt. Natasha Waggoner told Set-Aside Alert.

More information: OASIS Small Business RFP: http://goo.gl/npDTl7 Stan Soloway guest blog, Washington Business Journal: http://goo.gl/IJcUAW