Ken Blair

Note: Take a break from “self-distancing” and get a little bit of self-education to prepare for getting back to work!

Background:

The U.S. Air Force expects an April release of the Fair Opportunity Proposal Request (FOPR) for the Technical and Management Advisory Services for the Test Enterprise (TMAS 2) opportunity. In the works for well over a year, TMAS 2 will represent the first update to the TMAS contract first awarded in 2016. The first contract took nearly five years from sources sought until award. With this iteration, the Air Force is looking to significantly streamline the process and award contracts no later than July 1st of this year with a contract start date in October. Assuming the FOPR release date does not slip (and it may), a more rational timeline might be to expect the award date to slip into 2Q21 and contract start early 2Q21.

Using the One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services Small Business (OASIS) contract through the GSA, the Air Force is again undertaking to provide support for the Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC) for the following aspects of RDT&E projects:

  • Project and Business Management Support
  • Engineering Support
  • Flight Test Operations

Disciplines run the gamut from project management to various engineering skill sets to include flight and ground test planning, provisioning, executing, analyzing, and reporting in the flight science, avionics integration, range, and instrumentation disciplines, as well as civil engineering. A range of information technology skills are required as well such as Microsoft Internet Information Server, JAVA, ASP, Visual Basic, HTML, DHTML, XML, JavaScript, VBScript, MS Visual Studio.NET, SQL, Oracle and SQL Server. Telemetry capabilities are also stressed throughout the draft Performance Work Statement.

Current Contract:

Under the current TMAS contract, five task orders have been issued worth an aggregate of approximately $576M. Deltek estimates for TMAS 2 is currently $947M but the Government has not provided any estimates. Staffing under the current task orders is approximately 200 FTEs with the majority of those located at the AEDC.

Status:

Up to this point, the Air Force seems to think they have the requirements well-defined and articulated. During the last question and answer exchange (posted on 2/18/20), the Air Force responded to the majority of the 46 questions with a simple statement:

“Criteria remains unchanged. The Government is confident that using criteria set forth provides for a fair and balanced assessment based on the expected TMAS 2 requirements.

Many of the question submitted concerned requests to change the weighting, allocation, and scoring of Past Performance information. Obviously, with the FOPR still outstanding, there still may be opportunities to shape the requirements, but that time is dwindling rapidly, particularly if the Government meets its intended FOPR release timeline.

Considerations for bidding:

Reading through the requirements, there most likely will be a premium placed on the retention of incumbent staff. Placing an emphasis on incumbent capture during any provided transition period and providing significant proof points of similar successful efforts will be in an offeror’s favor. Along with this would be the provision of a dedicated transition team to cover all aspects of the transition to include:

  • Collaboration with the AEDC staff to determine high performing incumbents for targeted retention efforts
  • A staffing plan showing how you intend to approach transition activities and showing your milestones for staffing completeness
  • Your recruitment activities for new personnel
  • An approach for training and how you will structure shadowing of incumbent personnel

Conclusion:

If you haven’t been tracking the TMAS 2 opportunity it’s not too late particularly if you have a track record of performing similar tasks and can show how you have performed successful transitions for similarly sized efforts.

Errata:

GovWin Opportunity ID:            161040

Beta.SAM.Gov Notice ID:         TMAS2POOL6