62 Awards for Alliant Small Business GWAC GSA has chosen 62 IT companies for its Alliant Small Business governmentwide acquisition contract. The contractors will compete for task orders worth up to $15 billion over 10 years. (See list.) “This contract provides GSA’s customers with easy access to innovative IT solutions from small businesses and is an exceptional vehicle for federal agencies to meet their small business contracting goals,” GSA Administrator Lurita Doan said in a Dec. 17 conference call. She said the companies will offer “a full spectrum of IT hardware, services and combined solutions.” Alliant Small Business and its companion, the $50 billion full and open Alliant GWAC, are keys to GSA’s effort to recover some of the business it has lost. The agency reported IT sales on GSA Schedule 70 fell in 2007 for the third straight year. But Alliant faces increased competition from individual agencies’ enterprise-wide contract vehicles, such as the Homeland Security Department’s EAGLE and First Source. The minimum task order under Alliant SB is $100,000. GSA officials have said that figure was chosen so the new GWAC will complement the GSA schedule and the set-aside GWACs for service-disabled veterans, 8(a) firms and HUBZone companies, which can be used for smaller tasks. GSA officials said 142 companies made offers on Alliant Small Business. The agency had originally planned 35 to 40 awards, but increased the number because there were so many “outstanding submissions,” said John Johnson, assistant commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service. Nineteen of the awardees are joint ventures. Twenty-nine large and mid-sized companies were awarded spots on the full and open Alliant contract in July, but it has been delayed by protests. Johnson said he hopes the protests will be resolved within a couple of months. The Alliant Small Business contract is managed by GSA’s Small Business GWAC Center in Kansas City, MO.