GSA issues new Alliant draft RFPs

Small-business set-aside will bring as much as $15 billion to small firms, while the main contract is worth as much as $50 billion.

Alliant draft RFP

The General Services Administration has issued new draft solicitations for the long-awaited Alliant governmentwide acquisition contract and its small-business companion vehicle.

Under the new requests for proposals, the two information technology contracts are expected to be worth as much as $65 billion in 10 years. Alliant will generate as much as $50 billion, while Alliant SB will have a ceiling of $15 billion, said John Johnson, GSA’s assistant commissioner for service development and delivery.

The contracts are an important part of the agency's planned contract portfolio, Johnson said. He said the dialogue with industry and agencies during Alliant’s development has yielded drafts that reflect the needs of the groups that will use the contract.

“I think we have had an ongoing dialogue that’s been very productive and allowed us to produce a set of draft RFPs that are very close to the mark," he said.

About 25 to 30 companies will get spots on Alliant, and Alliant SB will go to 40 to 60 small businesses.

Jim Ghiloni, Alliant's program manager, said the new drafts reflect some changes made in response to comments from midsize businesses, which GSA solicited through a request for information issued in February.

“We reviewed the voluminous responses to that RFI, and we did make changes to the RFP in accordance to the information we received," he said. "Those changes are reflected in the structure of our evaluation factors, in our expected number of awards and the minimum order size that we’ve set.”

Public comments on the draft RFPs are due to GSA by June 30. The agency expects to issue the final RFPs in October and award the contracts by the summer of 2007.