GSA to take over SEWP VI contract ‘sooner rather than later’
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By
Nick Wakeman
Larry Allen, the General Services Administration's chief acquisition officer, says the agency may assume control before NASA completes awards for the $60 billion IT product vehicle.
The General Services Administration's push to to take over NASA’s $60 billion SEWP VI contract vehicle continues to move forward.
While the 10-year contract is still in the source selection phase, GSA's chief acquisition officer Larry Allen said Friday that the takeover will happen “sooner rather than later.”
Speaking at ACT-IAC’s annual Imagine Nation event, Allen said that GSA may not wait for NASA to make awards.
“We would like to take it, even if all the awards have yet to be made and realizing that sets us up for some litigation risk in protests,” said Allen, also associate administrator for GSA’s office of governmentwide policy.
There has been some skepticism in the market about GSA actually taking SEWP under its wing, given its size and its reputation for success.
But Allen said that President Trump’s March 20 executive order, Eliminating Waste and Saving Taxpayer Dollars by Consolidating Procurement, makes it clear that contracts and governmentwide acquisition contracts for common items will be consolidated at GSA.
“We want to execute that executive order,” he said.
The National Institutes of Health’s Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center also manages several large GWACs. Allen said GSA may only take over some of NITAAC’s vehicles.
NITAAC manages CIO-SP3, CIO-SP3 Small Business and CIO-CS. CIO-SP4 is still in source selection as NITAAC works to address multiple bid protests. Deltek data estimates CIO-SP4 awards to happen in April 2026.
“I don’t know if we’ll take all of it, but we’ll take part of it,” Allen said.
GSA’s plan is to do a “lift and shift” with SEWP by moving over the contract and some of the people who manage the vehicle. In time, GSA will look to consolidate the vehicles themselves.
“Redundancy costs us money and it costs you (industry) money. There is no reason to have five different procurement programs doing the same thing,” Allen said. “But that’s not going to be the first thing we do. We want to get everything in and look at what we are doing and then we want to make the smart business decisions.”
While many industry agree there are redundancies in contracts, some have expressed concerns that consolidating so many large vehicles at GSA could stifle innovative ideas for new acquisitions.