General Services Administration has updated its GSA COMET Information solicitation releasing a DRAFT Solicitation Instructions and Evaluation Criteria for the GSA COMET BPA acquisition. The first announcement by the agency regarding this contract opportunity was made in July 2018, and until now there have been updates/changes.
The purpose of GSA COMET is to modernize technology at the Federal Acquisition Services with cloud platforms and agile development in order to improve business services at the office.
Through the notice issued on the official website of FBO, the Government intends to encourage interested contractors to review the DRAFT document and familiarize with the proposed evaluation process.
During this time, GSA has organized Industry Days to gather as much as possible assessment, comments, and information from potential bidders to develop a flexible, cloud-based approach to COMET.
What do we know about COMET?
COMET is a recompete of GSA’S CAMEO contract that supports the main IT environment at FAS, encompassing GSA Global Supply, Multiple Award Schedules, Personal Property Management, Travel, Fleet, Purchase Card Services, and Integrated Technology programs.
The Government aims to capture the expertise of both Large and Small Businesses to provide a broad pool of industry experts, each offering its unique solutions to solve our challenges, this is why the COMET BPA is being solicited as a Partial Set Aside.
Using this partial set aside approach, accordingly, the award for the COMET BPA will be split into 2 portions:
1) Non-set-aside portion
(2) Set-aside portion
Nevertheless, all winners must demonstrate their capabilities in all functional areas of PWS, no matter what portion of the contract they win.
Furthermore, the Government anticipates making 5-7 total BPA awards among both the set-aside and non-set-aside portions. This number is an approximation and the Government reserves the right in its sole discretion to establish a fewer or greater number of BPAs.
What Contractors should know?
EVALUATION FACTORS AND SELECTION
The evaluation process will be conducted in accordance with FAR 8.405-2 and 8.405-3. Evaluation factors in order of priority are listed below:
- Factor 1 – Past Experience
- Factor 2 – Technical Approach
- Factor 3 – Management Approach
- Factor 4 – Coding Challenge exercise
- Factor 5 – Price
Contractors must be able to submit all the benefits the Government may have from them, always based on the requirements that will be specified in the final solicitation. The proposal and the solution must be in compliance with the criteria presented.
Moreover, the Government intends to use a three-step approach to evaluate offers. The government will consider all offerors using Factor 1 when assessing proposals using First Step Consideration. Selected offerors will be invited to advance to the second step consideration. The same will apply for other steps of evaluation. BPA awards made in the third step will be on a non-set-aside basis open to small and/or large businesses.
On the other hand, all Non-set-aside awards have been made in Step 3, the Contracting Officer will negotiate with eligible small business concern offerors who were selected to continue to Step 3, but did not receive a BPA award on a non-set-aside basis. These offerors must represent as a small business under the NAICS code of the COMET BPA.
