Army launches $50B IT, professional services solicitation

With much anticipation and fanfare, the Army has unveiled the final solicitation for its potential $50 billion contract that will bundle IT and professional services into a single vehicle.

The Army set up the Marketplace for the Acquisition of Professional Services contract to cover a wide range of knowledge-based work for mission and enterprise requirements around the world, including in contingency and operational settings.

Bids for the potential 10-year MAPS vehicle are due no later than 5 p.m. Eastern time on May 1, the Army said in a Wednesday notice to release the request for proposals.

MAPS will be the Army’s primary contract for acquiring staff augmentation and technology support from industry. This work currently takes place under the Responsive Strategic Services Sourcing and Information Technology Enterprise Solution-3 Services vehicles, which have a combined 396 companies involved as primes.

Approximately $13.8 billion in total task order obligations have flowed through RS3 and ITES-3S since both of them were opened for business in 2017 and 2018, respectively, according to GovTribe data. RS3 is slated to sunset in May 2027, followed by ITES-3S in September 2027.

MAPS’ duration includes an initial five-year base period and a single option for five more years.

The Army will award up to 350 positions on MAPS across these five domains with 70 slots each:

• Engineering, logistics and operational services
• Management and advisory support
• Research, development, testing and evaluation
• Emerging IT
• Foundational IT

That 70-per-domain figure further breaks out to 30 large businesses, 25 small businesses and 15 commercial sector vendors in each. The Army can adjust those numbers in the event there are fewer awardable proposals in either category.

The Army has structured its evaluation approach for MAPS as a four-phase process that begins with a review of all bids and ranking their self-scores in phase one, then phase two will involve a verification review and making any needed downward adjustments to re-rank proposals.

For phase three, the Army will establish a pool of preliminary prospective awardees in each domain and look at bidders’ small business subcontracting plans and status as responsible contractors.

If any preliminary prospective awardee is found ineligible, they will be removed from the competition and the next-highest verified score will move up in rank to take that position.

Phase four is where the Army will aim to hit its goal of having the 70 highest-verified scores identified for each domain, and those companies will become final awardees.

Companies may bid for a place on more than one domain, but they must submit separate proposals for each domain they are pursuing. Bids must also identify which domain they are focused on and have unique scorecards for each.

The same cover letter, qualifying projects and past performance questionnaire can be reused for each domain proposal submission.