Back in January of last year, the Unites States Special Operations Command released a requirement for soft body armor in support of the Special Operations Forces Personal Equipment Advanced Requirements (SPEAR) program.
For those of you who are fixated on price being the government’s number one factor for selection of a solution, this isn’t always the case. For this solicitation, they were intent on the best value with appropriate consideration given to the major factors listed in descending order of importance: Technical/Management, Past Performance, and Price. Technical/Management is significantly more important than Past Performance, which is significantly more important than Price.
Specifically, the Technical/Management Factor (Factor 1) is significantly more important than the Past Performance Factor (Factor 2), which is significantly more important than the Price Factor (Factor 3). With regard to Factor 1, Subfactor 1 is significantly more important than Subfactor 2 which is significantly more important than Subfactor 3 which is significantly more important than Subfactor 4:
Factor 1 –TECHNICAL / MANAGEMENT
Subfactor 1: Weight?Subfactor 2: Soft Armor Limited User Evaluation?Subfactor 3: Technical Approach and Independent Ballistic Test Data
Subfactor 4: Delivery Schedule and Production Capacity/Capability
Factor 2 – PAST PERFORMANCE
Factor 3 – PRICE
They cancelled this initial solicitation at the end of April of this year because none of the offerors could meet the spec, which remains classified.
The solicitation was re-released in July of this year and an award was announced on September 20th to Hardwire, LLC of Pocomoke City MD. The award is a five-year, IDIQ, Firm Fixed Price contract for a minimum of $100,000.00 and a ceiling of $8,000,000.00.
Tags: Hardwire
That’s fairly standard language for a “best value” procurement. In practice, I’ve rarely seen the government willing to pay more than a 10% premium for a better solution; there’s a limit to how much more the best value can cost.
And I’ve also seen too many “best value” competitions be awarded to the lowest bidder because the government can’t differentiate between the bidders’ solutions – which is usually the shared responsibility of the government and the vendors. The requirement often isn’t all that well written, and the bidders don’t show why theirs is worth more.
But we can hope for true best value competitions. Maybe this one will turn out that way once they revise and re-issue it.
Ah – I see they already awarded it in the recompete.
$8,000,000 in bulletproof clipboards!