Ken Blair–

Background

With the release of the Sources Sought Notice (SSN) in January of 2017, the Navy began its journey on a long road to replace seven contracts with a single vehicle to provide Cyber technical, training, and analytical support to Naval Information Forces and its subordinate commands. The seven previous contracts were awarded under a single solicitation (N0018911R0019) and were fixed price with a total of eight responses received.

After a significant lapse in information from the contracting office, Deltek predicts that the long-awaited RFP may be released in November, with a potential award in May 2019. There has been no draft RFP, and the PWS that has been released is rather sparse without any concrete work requirements. Don’t be surprised if the November release is a draft RFP with a much more extensive PWS to address the 28 mission areas identified in the released PWS.

With an estimated value of well over $700M, the contract is anticipated to be an agency-specific IDIQ with a one-year base and four 1-year options.  At this time, it’s unknown how many awards will be made.

RFP Information to Date

No draft RFP has been released, so the specifics of the response are unknown. However, Attachment 1 to the released PWS includes 40 labor categories, and the mission area list shown is a broad brush of activities across the range of the Cyber-related landscape. Half of the labor categories require a TS/SCI/SSBI clearance. And they specifically stipulate that “Contractor personnel shall have the appropriate security clearance as of the first day of the period of performance” and that all TS/SCI clearances should be fully adjudicated and eligible for transfer as of the “first day of Contract/Task Order.”

Winning a Contract

Given the immediacy of the potential RFP release, potential bidders should be taking a look at their personnel with the skills and experiences identified in the PWS. None of the labor categories would appear to have any particularly difficult-to-fill requirements. But the required Day 1 status of the clearances may take some maneuvering to be fully compliant.

Once the RFP is released, anticipate a 45-day turn. If a draft is released, treat it like the final and begin gathering your resources and start the content development cycle. You’ll need to marshal your writing resources to cover the broad mission areas and start developing your past performance. Consider targeting your past performance not only from a contract perspective but also from a personnel perspective and consider designating additional key personnel beyond what the RFP may require so that you can directly intersperse their experience with the requirements of the RFP.