GSA Alliant 2, the largest ever Health IT vehicle, is coming in June. Are you ready?

 

The Current Alliant program has 63 agencies with $22.8 billion in task order value over the life of the contract. This has been the largest GWAC by revenue value ever. Alliant 2 will be even bigger than Alliant with Defense Health Agency (DHA) and Special Operations Command moving into Alliant 2, as well. DHA by itself has committed over $5 billion to new health IT.  With a $50 billion ceiling for Unrestricted and $15 billion for SB, Alliant 2 will be a top vehicle for health IT for the coming years.

It is estimate that the final RFP will be issued in June with the estimated proposal due date being August. The Contract ordering period will start in 2017. There are going to be 60 Unrestricted and 80 SB winners.

The question is how you should prepare yourself to increase your win-rate and get a piece of this lucrative pie. Should you work on your prices? Should you team up and partner with other companies? Should you become subcontractor to another company? Should you prepare a list of all your past-performed projects from small to large to have an impressive record? … I am sorry to say but none of those work out. Let us see why.

1- Price

Alliant 2 is not an LPTA or Tradeoff. It is Highest Technically Rated with fair and Reasonable Prices. In other words, the technical factors rule. You just have to have your prices in the range to be considered “reasonable”, not too low, and not too high. The scoring of the proposal is as follows (ranked by score):

  • Relevant Experience = 44%
  • Past Performance = 23%
  • Leading Edge = 10%
  • Accounting = 10%
  • Certifications = 8%
  • Clearance = 5%

2- Teaming/Partnering to use others’ past performance

If you think you can resolve the missing relevant past experience projects by teaming up with another company, you are mistaken. The draft RFP is clear to state that you cannot use the experience of a CTA (Contractor Team Arrangements) member for this RFP. You can only use the ones that were awarded and performed by the CTA itself.

3- Becoming subcontractor to another Prime

Unfortunately, you can only use past experience and performance for the projects that you performed as Prime. Therefore, there is no reason for a Prime, without sufficient projects, to use you as his sub.

4- Type of past performed projects

Your provided past performed projects must all be above $1m value. You must pick 7 projects, up to 4 can be from PSC Group 1 (telecom, maintenance, cloud, cybersecurity, help-desk, …), 2 from PSC Group II (design/analysis, software, internet, …), and one from PSC Group III (mostly data processes work and some misc. work)

 

What Can You Do to Prepare Yourself?

1- The Self-Scoring System

A self-scoring system is part of the proposal. Companies can claim points for relevant experience and certifications. There are 80 topics that you need to fill out properly to get your score done. The maximum score is 75,600. Some of these are:

  • Did you complete a $1 million cybersecurity project recently? That’s 100 points.
  • Does your company have ISO 9001 certification? You get 1,500 points.
  • Do you have Top Secret Clearance? You will get 3500 points.
  • Do you have a signed audited accounting record? You get 5500 points for that.
  • Have you managed an overseas Federal IT facility for a $100 million cost-plus-fixed-fee multiple-award task order? That’s a whopping 10,000 points.
  • …

Therefore, you need to work on this to get your score and ranking.

2- Proposal Resources

You also need to have proper resources to do a professional work on the self-scoring and the rest of the proposal on a timely manner. This is not a routine proposal development job. This is the largest contract for the next coming years in this space. You should not treat it as routine. If you have a capable in-house proposal development team with a HIGH win-rate, then, at the minimum, you should get reviewing and quality control help from an outside source. If your win-rate is medium or low (below 70%), you should definitely outsource to a capable development company. You should concentrate on the self-scoring and the preparation of the proposal and invest for it. This investment will bring you multiple contracts in the coming years.

 

Don’t underestimate the work needed to prepare a winning proposal. You need to start now if you have not done so already. If you wait until June when the RFP comes out, it will be too late!